One of the most interesting things that writer/director Christian Swegal does in his new film Sovereign is forgoing any introductory text scrawl or blatant exposition that fully defines the “Sovereign Citizen” ideology, opting instead to let the audience’s knowledge of this radical belief system accrue gradually over the course of the film’s runtime. Instead, Sovereign begins with the aftermath of a crime in which police officers have been shot. We hear and see news reports, but not the incident itself, before flashing back to the days and weeks leading up to the event. It’s clear, though, that the story unfolding in front of us is leading inexorably to an act of violence.
It’s jarring, then, when we are suddenly introduced to Jerry Kane (Nick Offerman) and his son Joe (Jacob Tremblay). They are fairly quiet, seemingly decent people, and like many are living on the fringes of society as economic factors beyond their control stack up against them. The story takes place in 2010, and the aftermath of the 2009 housing crisis is still ravaging much of the country. Jerry travels from town to town giving seminars about the Sovereign Citizen movement, and his audiences are desperate enough to be receptive to such a provocative ideology. These sequences reveal both details of Jerry’s beliefs — a pseudo-legal patchwork that says citizens do not have to submit to banks and state/federal bureaucracy unless they specifically consent to do so — while giving us sympathetic portraits of real people who have lost their homes, been downsized at work, or are being crushed by medical debt. In other words, the film is detailing the late stages of neoliberal capitalism, and if we reflexively flinch from Jerry’s outré beliefs, we can still clearly understand where people’s anger is coming from. As the rich get richer, America has left large swathes of the population behind. It’s a diagnosis of a moment that is still very much with us, perhaps even more so now than 15 years ago.
There’s also a concurrent thread running through the film, as Swegal occasionally cuts away from Jerry to follow Chief John Bouchart (Dennis Quaid) and his son Adam (Thomas Mann), some local cops who cross paths with young Joe when the state intervenes and threatens to take him from Jerry. That particular threat goes nowhere, but it puts young Joe on the Chief’s radar. Gradually, the film becomes a story about bad fathers passing on untenable belief systems to their sons, and the dire consequences that follow. Swegal carefully charts Jerry’s increasing radicalization, as he butts heads with an uncaring, unsympathetic court system and abusive traffic cops. Some of this is undoubtedly due to Jerry’s own stubbornness, but there’s also a clear sense of a society at large constructed entirely to subjugate people. It makes a startling amount of sense that someone would chafe against it.
There’s more story here than the above synopsis details; Jerry spends time with a potential love interest, Lesley Anne (Martha Plimpton), while Joe struggles to reconcile his desire for a normal teenage life with the demands of his father. Chief Bouchart glad-hands around the station and constantly lectures Adam on the best way to handle his newborn child. Swegal doesn’t attempt an exact 1:1 relationship between these pairs of paternal relationships, but all parties involved are at least humanized. Of course, the act of violence reported on at the film’s beginning hangs over these proceedings like an albatross, and as things become more and more dire, we become even more aware of the impending apocalyptic finale. Sovereign is based on a true story, so some viewers might already know where things are headed and who does what to whom. But foreknowledge of the events somehow makes them even more tragic, as one is inclined to parse the narrative in an attempt to locate where the point of no return was finally breached. Swegal has made a gripping “where we are now” document, mostly free of easy political handwaving and too-topical cable news rhetoric. Sovereign is a tragedy, and while it does not excuse the actions of its protagonists-turned-antagonists, it dares to suggest our shared humanity in the face of an uncaring capitalistic hellscape.
DIRECTOR: Christian Swegal; CAST: Nick Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, Dennis Quaid, Martha Plimpton; DISTRIBUTOR: Briarcliff Entertainment; IN THEATERS/STREAMING: July 11; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
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