Sovereign

Not unlike Michael Scott thinking that merely yelling “I declare bankruptcy!” is the same thing as actually declaring bankruptcy, they're of the belief that most laws don’t apply to them because they don’t acknowledge the government’s authority to impose them. Would that it were so simple. Like a lot of fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, this one is silly until it’s not — a spectrum we experience in Sovereign.

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Inspired by true events and opening with an actual 911 call about the inevitable consequences of this line of thinking, writer/director Christian Swegal’s feature debut has the chilly air of docufiction. There’s never much doubt where things are headed, but there is a slow-moving-trainwreck quality that makes it hard to look away. There’s also a pair of quality performances from Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay as a father and son living on the fringes of society and none too eager to become productive members of it. “If you're a U.S. citizen,” Jerry Kane tells his homeschooled son Joe while helping him with his homework one afternoon, “Congratulations, you’re the property of the District of Columbia — a subject, not a sovereign.”

Offerman is excellent in a sort of funhouse-mirror version of his most famous character, the scofflaw libertarian Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. Only here, there’s nothing funny about him. Jerry refers to bank representatives as the Gestapo, insists that he doesn’t need a driver’s license because the car he’s driving is a “conveyance” rather than a “vehicle,” and is an expert on filing forms that are intended to gum up the bureaucratic works but mostly just create extra work for the clerks he hands them to. His house is scheduled to be foreclosed on in 30 days, not that he believes it — the bank has no right to do so, he declares, and so he tells the boy to quit worrying so much.

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There’s a bit of an American History X dynamic at play here, with the younger generation having no say in the fringe ideology they were raised to believe is normal. These beliefs aren’t as inherently hateful, but they do have similarly tragic outcomes. On the other side of the law is another father-son duo: police chief Jim Bouchart (Dennis Quaid) and his son (Thomas Mann), an officer in training and new parent himself. The only parenting advice we see Jim offer applies to more than just newborns: “Never pick up a crying baby.” Sovereign loses some of its oomph when focusing on them, so magnetic is Offerman’s lead performance, but the two family plots do eventually converge. By the time you realize how and why, you wish they wouldn’t.

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Jerry knows his rights, but his understanding of them has been so filtered through half-baked ideology that he’s utterly incapable of actually defending himself in an actual court of law. His harangues are about as valid as the “permit” Swanson produces that reads simply “I can do what I want.” All of this is, of course, frivolous, but Offerman imbues Jerry with such chilling charisma that you may occasionally find yourself tempted to nod along in agreement before coming to your senses and remembering that no, a Social Security number isn’t like the mark of the beast at all

These beliefs aren’t as inherently hateful, but they do have similarly tragic outcomes.

Offerman has amassed a sneakily impressive body of work post-Parks and Rec, with roles as varied as a postapocalyptic survivor in a standout episode of The Last of Us and the President of the United States in last year’s equally hot-button Civil War. With his distinct, husky voice and rare ability to vacillate between comforting and intimidating with the raise of an eyebrow, he's proven just as comfortable in dark dramas as he is in wry comedies. This, however, might be the performance of his career.

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It wouldn’t be as powerful were it not for Tremblay. Now a decade removed from his breakthrough performance in Room, the 18-year-old has grown considerably as a performer and feels eerily at home in this tale of what we pass down from one generation to the next. Joe shows flashes of a burgeoning independence throughout, but is too afraid of how his unstable father will react if he actually declares it. More than any line written by the Founding Fathers, though, their plight brings to mind a more modern saying: “You can be right or you can be happy.” Jerry’s tragedy, which he passes on to his son, is that he can’t be either.