‘Bushwick’ on Netflix: Civil War Breaks Out In The Hipster Haven Of Brooklyn

Everything these days feels like the end of the world, so the 2017 indie action flick Bushwick ought to appeal, with its premise that one day Brooklyn ends up the setting for a mysterious paramilitary siege, with its epicenter in the gentrifying environs of the Bushwick neighborhood. Why wouldn’t the ultimate breakdown of American society happen for any number of current American anxieties, from racial tensions to liberal fear of an armed and virulently conservative nation? In terms of searing, ripe-with-possibility premises, Bushwick has got it. But the film — which somewhat inexplicably played at the Directors Fortnight at Cannes this year — squanders all that possibility from the word “go,” delivering warmed-over cliches of urban war zones and precious little character or intrigue to hold onto.

In the tradition of the Purge movies, we’re set in a nightmare alternate future that may well be tomorrow, where the bubbling societal tensions have finally boiled over, and there’s suddenly a new world order. But while The Purge pulls viewers in with the curiosity of a regimented, codified system of socially prescribed lawlessness, Bushwick springs it on its characters suddenly. Lucy (Brittany Snow) has just gotten off the L train in Bushwick (at the wrong subway station, not that the film doesn’t give you plenty of other reasons for dissatisfaction, but that’s one) with her boyfriend. They barely get a second to note the ominous emptiness of the subway station before a man engulfed in flames screams down the stairs and past them. So … something’s amiss? Things go from bad to worse, then, when Lucy’s boyfriend goes to check out what’s going on at street level (where they can hear screaming and gunfire, and returns burned to a crisp).

Welcome to the revolution, Lucy! It started while you were traveling beneath the East River!

So Brooklyn is at war, with some sort of seemingly organized paramilitary organization trading gunfire with the people in the streets. For a long time we have no idea who’s fighting who, and while that kind of chaos can work in a “Violence makes killers of all of us no matter whose side we’re on” deep-thoughts variety, in this case it just means that it takes us a long time before we know where to invest our emotions. With Lucy, one supposes, and soon enough with her burly protector, played by Dave Bautista, who found time in between Guardians of the Galaxy and Blade Runner movies to lend some sort of blockbuster shine to this action-setpieces-on-a-dime indie. By the time we (and our protagonists) realize what’s going on, we’ve wasted a lot of time, but it’s nevertheless intriguing in its specificity: a whole bunch of Southern states, starting with Texas, have seceded from the U.S. and are waging war against the north. As a broad stroke, it’s fascinating in 2017 to contemplate, given the racial animus we’ve seen on display in places like Charlottesville and the fact that these people are heavily armed. But in addition to being rather sloppy about applying logic to its factions (why exactly are they attacking Bushwick specifically again?), Bushwick tries to do too much by also incorporating critiques of Brooklyn gentrification. There are filmmakers who might be able to blend both overt and covert racism with both systemic and antagonistic racist policies, but these are not the ones.

Ultimately, what’s interesting about a modern-day secessionist street war in east Brooklyn gets cast upon the rocks of a story that can’t hold onto it, mostly because its central characters aren’t interesting enough to support it. Snow and Bautista do their best, but they’re being asked to play paper-thin people, and any character development invariably gets lost every time the filmmakers decide to embark upon another unbroken take or fancy camera maneuver. If you’re looking for the definitive 2017-era societal-collapse picture, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.

Stream Bushwick on Netflix.