Ashley Gallegos | Through the Shattered Lens

Laws of Man opens with two U.S. marshals driving through the desert of Utah. Tommy Morton (Jackson Rathbone) is young and impulsive, a Korean war vet who is quick to open fire. Frank Fenton (Jacob Keohane) is older and more cautious. He also served in the military, though his service was during World War II. Frank is haunted by flashbacks to a particularly gruesome battle. Tommy and Frank may spend most of their time wearing black suits in the desert but neither one breaks a sweat.

The year is 1963. Kennedy is in the White House. The communists are on the move. And Tommy and Frank are busy executing arrest warrants in the most desolate part of the country. An attempt to arrest Mormon cult leader Crash Mooncalf (Ricard Brake) leads to a bloody shootout that leaves Mooncalf and his followers dead. Their next assignment leads them to a small town in Nevada, where Bill Bonney (Dermot Mulroney) and his violent family is suspected of killing local ranchers and stealing their land.

From the minute that Tommy and Frank arrive in Nevada, something feels off. They stay at a cheap motel, where Tommy picks up a woman named Dinah (Ashley Gallegos) and Frank spends his time talking to a bartender named Callie (Kelly Lynn Reiter). An old rancher named Don Burgess (Forrie J. Smith) shows off his gun and says that he would rather suffer a violent death than give up his land. A traveling preacher named Cassidy Whitaker (Harvey Keitel) approaches Frank in the parking lot and starts talking about sin and redemption. Meanwhile, FBI agent Galen Armstong (Keith Carradine) appears to be curiously unconcerned with the Bonneys and their reign of violence. As for the sheriff (Graham Greene), he spending his time sitting outside a burned-out ranch house. The charred bodies of the owners are still inside, seated around the dinner table.

An attempt to arrest Bill Bonney at his home leads to a violent shootout, one in which no one is killed but Bill is still not happy about having a bunch of bullet holes in his roof. Tommy and Frank attempt to serve the arrest warrant, just to discover that it’s not going to be as easy as they thought. Frank, whose World War II flashbacks are getting more and more intense, wants to leave town. Tommy, however, is obsessed with discovering what exactly everyone is hiding.

And, through it all, people who know their history will notice that the film is taking place in November of 1963 and the 22nd is rapidly approaching….

Laws of Man gets off to a strong start but begins to meander about halfway through. Luckily, the film’s final third features a wonderfully insane twist that recaptures the viewer’s attention. No matter what you may think is going on in the film, it can’t prepare you for just how weird things eventually get. Laws of Man is an entertaining film, one that is occasionally a bit too self-consciously quirky for its own good but which ultimately works. Jackson Rathbone and Jacob Keohane both give strong performances in the lead roles and the familiar faces in the film’s supporting cast all do their best to bring the film’s often surreal world to life. Dermot Mulroney and Keith Carradine give especially strong performance while Harvey Keitel appears to be having fun as the offbeat preacher.

Laws of Man managed to truly take me by surprise. For fans of paranoid cinema, it’s definitely worth making time for.

Penny (Ashley Gallegos) is your worst nightmare.

She’s a former high school outcast who can now legally carry a gun. How much of an outcast was Penny? She was such an outcast that she was humiliated at a school dance by a bunch of popular kids who tied her down to a chair, made her up to look like a pig, and then displayed her in front of the entire class. Seriously, how do teenage bullies come up with stuff? I mean, I was never one to take part in bullying but, even if I was, my ADD would make it impossible for me to pull off most of the elaborate schemes that always seem to take place in movies like this.

Anyway, Penny was traumatized by the whole incident but she still managed to graduate and eventually become a cop. That’s right. Penny is upholding the law and she’s got an entire department to back her up in case she happens to shoot anyone and …. well, can you see why this might be a problem for her former high school classmates?

One night, Penny is called out to investigate a home invasion. After Penny shoots the home invader dead, she meets with the home’s owner and it turns out to be a former classmate, Tara (Kaitlyn Black)! Tara, who seems to have no memory of Penny’s life being destroyed in high school, is soon hanging out with her old classmate. She invites her to a party. She and Penny go out to the desert for target practice. The whole time, of course, Penny keeps imagining that she’s surrounded by the taunting laughter of her former classmates. Penny’s going to get her revenge, even if it means coming up with a scheme that’s even more ludicrously elaborate as the one that embittered her in the first place.

Hometown Killer is a classic Lifetime film, one that full embraces every melodramatic possibility of its storyline. Penny may be a dishonest murderer but you still feel sorry for her because of what she went through in high school. This is one of those films that makes you think, “Y’know, she probably she shouldn’t be doing this but maybe she should.” Director Jeff Hare adds enough little quirky touches to distinguish Hometown Killer from other, similar films. I especially liked the way the he took us in and out of Penny’s mind, always keeping us off-balance as to whether or not we were seeing what was really happening or if we were instead seeing what Penny thought was reality. It kept the audience off-balance and, as a result, Hometown Killer generated a lot more suspense than the average Lifetime film.

The success of a film like this pretty much hinges on the actress playing the killer and Ashley Gallegos did a great job of making Penny both sympathetic and frightening. Perhaps her greatest moment in the film is when she simply watches the chaos that she’s created and allows herself a slightly satisfied smirk. It’s a small moment but it tells us everything that we need to know about what’s going on in her head. Also impressive was Kelly Marcus, who was wonderfully obnoxious as the prototypical high school bully who never adjusted to life in the real world.

Hometown Killer aired on Lifetime and, Lifetime being Lifetime, it will undoubtedly air again. Keep an eye out for it!