A flurry of excitement erupts across a dusty South Dakota town when a Lakota Ghost Shirt winds up for sale on the black market.  Collector Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) enlists Dillion (Eric Dane) and Dave (Joe Adler) to retrieve the shirt, but when Mandy (Halsey) takes off with Dillion’s car, an all-out rat race ensues.  Captured in the fray are Penny Jo (Sydney Sweeney) and Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser) with dreams of going to Nashville, and Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), leader of a local tribal gang, exploiting the fantasies of a young boy, Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman), who claims to be the reincarnation of Chief Sitting Bull. 

Long fascinated by writing stories in the West, Tony Tost delivers his first feature script and directorial debut in Americana, an ensemble piece that premiered at the 2023 edition of the South by Southwest Film Festival.  It sat shelved for over two years before Lionsgate, after acquiring the title from the now bankrupt Bron Studios, gave the film a release on just over 1,000 screens nationwide.  Released in the doldrums of summer and boasting a buzzy cast, it took its bow at the same unfortunate time when Sweeney was tied up in controversy over an American Eagle ad.   

Opening in media res and presented in a chaptered structure, Americana has all the hallmarks of a freshman feature, but in conjunction with a committed cast, crisp cinematography from Nigel Bluck, and steady editing by Peter McNulty, Tost’s first foray is an engaging and well put together piece.  From the jump, Tost is quick to establish the tone of Americana, one that is rooted in the romanticism of the West yet through the disillusioned lens of the people who call that region their home.  Far from an outright comedy, Tost is sure to let us know that it is not to be taken too seriously, either.  While he is working with less precision than the Coen Brothers, who have returned time and again to this middle corridor for many of their films, Tost is nevertheless working in that same tradition for this kaleidoscopic farce. 

The thread that ties the multiple stories together is Mandy: mother of Cal, girlfriend of Dillon, and daughter of Hiram (Christopher Kriesa).  Halsey excels in a role that asks a lot of her, and with the most interaction across the most different characters, she is careful not to give too much away in any of her scenes.  Most of the information we need comes from outside of her, though it is not quite correct to call Mandy the central character from which the story flows; rather, she is just at the unfortunate intersection of these various plotlines.  Halsey solidifies her hold over Americana in the back half of the narrative when she returns to her childhood home, a small religious commune in which the women are subservient to men, and her performance takes on an entirely different style, allowing her to stretch the most outside of the boundaries of caricature than any of the other ensemble actors.  She remains a fierce character but has to weaponize it differently in this new environment, and as the night devolves into chaos, watching her continue to take the reins and lead the action is nothing short of exciting. 

Opposite Halsey, though not quite her foil, is Sweeney’s Penny Jo, outfitted by Jillian Bundrick for much of the film in a great pink, puffy, fringe jacket.  Framed in the marketing as the lead of the film, it is not an entirely accurate claim, but Penny Jo does command much of the narrative in which Mandy is only tangentially associated with as to tie the whole story together.  A waitress with dreams of moving to Nashville to become a country music star, she looks kindly on Lefty, a retired soldier and hopeless romantic who received a head injury and now runs a small ranch.  Sweeney’s performance is fine, and she makes a great scene partner with Houser, whose good-natured affableness is too gentile for the world of this film, which makes the pair easy to root for against the more brash Mandy even though both women have similar dreams of what life outside of South Dakota can provide them.  Further, Penny Jo and Lefty’s story is delivered in a much more linear way as they end up being the tagalongs to this heist, and we can spend extended periods of time with these two by themselves without worrying about the narrative strain or the balancing act of the central plot.  They involve themselves in the danger after Penny Jo catches wind that there will be an opportunity for a large sum of money being discussed one Friday afternoon at the diner she works at.  With Lefty strategically placed in the booth next to Roy, Dillion, and Dave, the pair has their marching orders. They take off down the dusty highway in pursuit of the ghost shirt, which at this point has inadvertently changed hands along the way, but in this small town, all roads lead to Hiram. 

In the same way that Tost allows Halsey to flex in the back half of the film, so too does he allow himself a chance to show off.  Until now, even with a wide web of a story, Americana was rather metered in its action, but once everyone is together on Hiram’s lot, an all-out brawl erupts as the various factions, from organized to in-over-their-heads, become desperate to survive the night. Buck and McNulty once again come in with the assist to make sure that this action, much of it at night and always flipping between the various sub-locations of the compound, is visible and legible to the audience. This helps avoid being overwhelmed by the sudden shot of adrenaline injected into the pacing of the film.   

While Tost both starts and wraps up the action of the film with great skill, the epilogue reveals a slipping of the hand, at least on the character side of the narrative.  It is an unfortunate hiccup in an otherwise shockingly taught narrative despite its structure, and it is the one instance where is can be said that Tost tries just a little too much.  Growing just a little too fond of his surviving characters, Tost gives them all a little too long together in ways that ended up feeling contrived, with none suffering worse than Hauser’s Lefty in the car with Penny Jo.   

Americana, though, is still an enjoyable film and a well-realized work.  Singed by controversy not even of its own making and condemed to the August corridor by Lionsgate, there are plenty of easy excuses to point to should the film deeply underperform despite the various other plagues afflicting modern moviegoing – ticket cost, audience’s avoidance of certain genres or non-eventised original material, and, again, the August slump is not to be ignored – but like any of those late summer releases a ’la Strange Darling (2024), Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023), and Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), Americana will reward the adventurous audience, even if they were just seeking reprieve in the air conditioning or trying to salvage a rained-out beach day.  It may not muscle its way into the realm of classic, either with or without the “cult” modifier, but Americana is not too far afield. Surprisingly, especially for a debut feature script, Tost never lets those influences drown out his own unique voice.  Sure, there is the overreach of a first-time filmmaker, and much of that can be attributed to his pedigree in television, but it can even still largely be forgiven as the world of the film and this cast of characters are uniquely enjoyable that we revel in our time together with them.