Violent Ends

True story. 

My dad was the youngest of six and because of the age gap between the siblings I had cousins who were old enough to be uncles. One of them Randy had a twin brother who was a cop in Georgia or Alabama who got run off the road while he was on his motorcycle and died. 

Cousin Randy didn’t believe the official story and he turned to my dad and said come with me and let’s go find the sons of bitches who did this. 

My father politely declined. 

This all happened before I was born and I wish I could tell you that Randy got them or that they got Randy but the truth is nobody ever talked to me about that part. Randy went up there and then he came home. And if something happened he (wisely) never talked about it. 

Which is a long way of saying I recognized some of the characters in the southern crime flick Violent Ends. 

Look, it doesn’t quite gel and there clearly wasn’t enough money to do much with the action set pieces. 

That trailer had me pumping my fist in the air but the movie itself didn’t quite deliver. 

But it was wonderful to see Ray McKinnon, formerly the pastor with dementia on Deadwood and dozens of other things, getting a meaty but small part as a very bad man. 

The lead, Billy Magnussen, is built like a linebacker and he’s got a real solid screen presence. I hope he gets some more shots at this kind of thing. 

Finally, let me mention the song Snake Hill. The turn is from Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley band. It’s about a guy who was born into either a family of criminals or a family of vampires. Either way, there’s evil running through his blood. 

I remember listening to it thinking that if you could expand it, it would make a heck of a movie. I think writer/director John-Michael Powell might have heard it and thought the same thing.