One of Hollywood’s most eye-rolling trends surfaces a few times a year: pretending they don’t despise the vast majority of Americans.
When they’re not churning out fanfiction assassinating political opponents, branding half the country Nazis, or subtly glorifying violence against conservatives—emboldened by tragedies like the Charlie Kirk murder attempt and the recent Dallas ICE shooter—they dust off the “blue-collar American film” to pander to Middle America. The problem? Their contempt is so baked in that even these outreach attempts reek of superiority, like a vegan lecturing at a barbecue.
No better example than Americana, a neo-Western crime caper so steeped in coastal snark it’s a miracle it didn’t premiere at a TED Talk. The premise alone is a fever dream: a toxic white guy and his white-trash girlfriend brawl until she brains him with an iron and flees, abandoning their confused 10-year-old son—who’s convinced he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull—and swiping a rare Lakota ghost shirt artifact worth nearly a million bucks. Cut to the second act, where a dimwitted ladies’ man (Paul Walter Hauser) and a pretty waitress with a speech impediment (Sydney Sweeney) form a low-IQ duo hell-bent on snagging the artifact from the girlfriend, now a white-trash Mormon goblin.
As if that weren’t absurd enough, the kid stumbles into a commune of actual Native American communists—still seething over reparations and quoting Frantz Fanon—while the artifact sparks a free-for-all on a psychopathic Mormon crime boss’s compound. It culminates in a four-way battle royale: Team Dumbass (Hauser and Sweeney), Team Commune, Team White Trash, and Team Lady Mormons. If this were a Royal Rumble, I’d have changed the channel faster than you can say “virtue signal.”
I bailed before the third act, but from what I endured, it’s a showdown for the ages—or at least that’s the delusion it peddles. Americana is too stupid to exist, yet here it is, dusted off after premiering at South by Southwest in 2023 and languishing until Lionsgate bit the bullet for distribution in 2025.
Shot three years ago, it’s a clichéd left-wing caricature of flyover country life: slap an American flag on the wall, toss in some crosses, amp up the Western aesthetics, and voilà—LA’s idea of how the rubes behave. The film’s so disjointed you can’t tell who the protagonist is, let alone the good guy. Every character registers a 10 on the annoyance Richter scale, but midway through, it anoints Mandy Starr (singer-actress Halsey) as the hero.
This is the same “hero” who ditched her minor son with a serial killer to save her skin, then—mid-firefight between the commune and a shady crime syndicate—decides the enlightened move is slaughtering all the men and arming the women, who’ve never fired a shot in their lives. Because nothing says empowerment like handing Uzis to the uninitiated.
The film apes neo-Western masters like Quentin Tarantino and Taylor Sheridan but lands like a bad cover band. You wish Sheridan had paused his 15th TV show to rewrite this dreck into something watchable. Instead, it jumbles scenes out of sequence for no reason, pretending it’s unveiling a gripping mystery when it’s just sloppy editing.
Sydney Sweeney, Hollywood’s current “it” girl, gets top billing on the poster but delivers a glorified C-tier cameo as Penny Jo, the stammering waitress. Her character could’ve been excised without altering a frame—proving she’s wasted on this mess. Between the Native American Che Guevara fanboys and Penny Jo’s contrived speech impediment, Americana feels like a parody of Westerns rather than a respectful nod.
It’s a film better off buried in the New Mexico desert, never to see daylight. Hollywood’s hatred shines through every frame: they think this passes for “relatable” Middle America, but it’s just smug coastal fanfic dressed in cowboy boots.
In a year of cinematic slop, Americana stands out for its audacity—pretending to celebrate the heartland while mocking it. Skip it; you’ll get more authenticity from a truck-stop diner.
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