Little Dixie, 2023.
Written and Directed by John Swab.
Starring Frank Grillo, Eric Dane, Annabeth Gish, Mercedes Mason, Peter Greene, Beau Knapp, Thomas Dekker, Maurice Compte, Sufe Bradshaw, Luis Da Silva Jr., Slaine, Sofia Bryant, Billy Blair, LaTeace Towns-Cuellar, Ben Hall, Dash Melrose, Danny Boy O’Connor, Mykle McCoslin, S. B. Weathersby, Mark Stephen Ward, Brett Swab, Alberto Zeni, Bruce Roach, and Sierra Herd.
SYNOPSIS:
Doc facilitates a fragile truce between the Governor and Cartel, trading prosecutorial leniency for finance. With no more truce, Doc is left to fend for himself and protect the one untainted thing in his life: his daughter, Little Dixie.
For his second movie in as many months for 2023, writer/director John Swab has returned to the Frank Grillo action well with Little Dixie, a tale of corrupt political intrigue surrounding a governor and Mexican cartel. Governor Richard Jeffs (Eric Dane) wants to maintain his position and will stop at nothing. He also doesn’t necessarily keep tabs on what his campaign team is doing. This causes a falling out between the governor’s interests and the Mexican cartel, as it turns out the very thing Richard Jeffs is cracking down on and determined to eradicate is in business with his team; they work together to keep the cartel relatively safe while putting just enough bad guys behind bars to maintain a balanced vote.
One of these associates is former military partner, friend, and Special Agent Doc Alexander (Frank Grillo), who winds up in the crossfire of the fallout. Lalo Miguel Prado (Maurice Compte) runs the operation, but his younger, American-born half-brother Raphael ‘Cuco’ Prado (Beau Knapp) is looking to step out of his shadow and make a name for himself. He’s doubly motivated because their other brother was recently handed the death penalty for triple homicide. During a drug raid – once Richard Jeffs becomes aware that everyone around him is going soft on the cartel – Cuco decides to go rogue, inevitably kidnapping Doc’s daughter Nell (Sofia Bryant), nicknamed Little Dixie.
A deal is also struck where if Doc literally brings them the governor’s head, they will make a trade for his daughter. Unsurprisingly, there is some forced drama about Doc’s troubled past marriage and connection to his daughter, but it mostly plays out like laziness intended to make viewers slightly care more about the situation at hand. Unfortunately, Little Dixie doesn’t contain much urgency, as the film goes through generic emotions once the complicated plot sets forth a run-of-the-mill rescue mission where vengeance is dished out.
There are some pleasantly weird distractions here, such as Cuco getting sidetracked at a drag show, which appears to be an attempt at layering his masculinity and why he is often perceived as the odd one out in his family. In execution, it’s poorly conceived nonsense that doesn’t accomplish any of that, although it does give Beau Knapp ample opportunity to tap into an entertaining psychopathic side that’s unquestionably the only compelling aspect of the film.
Eventually, Doc does obtain a severed head (I won’t spoil if it’s Richard’s or not), which prompts Frank Grillo to act out a heart-to-heart conversation while driving to the swap point. It’s another bizarre sequence that, while conceptually fascinating, isn’t exactly expanding any of these characters. As a result, John Swab falls back on blandly staged shootouts that attempt to compensate for that, with copious amounts of blood and characters constantly standing over one another to fire an unnecessary amount of bullets into a body.
It’s mildly engaging watching Frank Grillo dispatch generic henchmen without breaking a sweat, but when one considers how overly complicated Little Dixie is where it begins and how familiar it quickly devolves into, it’s more than a little disappointing. Aside from one sequence involving a chainsaw, even the violence fails to make an impression. Frank Grillo and his hardened intensity deserve better.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
