Saulnier likes his characters' orderliness a bit too much. It's another to film them as if every frame has to represent that compulsive mentality. It's one thing to focus on characters who treat every run-in like something they will eventually have to provide a list of itemized excuses for. Then again, Saulnier mimics his characters' OCD-level exactitude, and that's seriously distracting. Saulnier earns some genuinely admirable, close-to-the-vest laughs whenever characters condescend to each other, like when Pat's group opens a set with the Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" and their frontman whimpers "That was a cover" to an unsympathetic crowd of bigots. That's the essence of the punk scene according to "Green Room": a scene obsessed with authenticity populated by severe, self-made men. Saulnier frequently reminds viewers that neither his pro- or antagonists are walking ledger books, but rather scared people who happen to be too serious for their own goods. They're all business, but so are the guys that are out to get them: the Nazi punks that lock Pat and his crew in a graffiti-covered changing room take orders from self-serious club owner Darcy Banker ( Patrick Stewart), a guy that describes his club as a "movement, not a party." They even get flustered when a booker interviews them for a college radio gig, and asks them a question as frivolous as "Name your desert island band." So when Pat accidentally sees a group of skinheads crowded around a dead body, it's no surprise that he and his group already have one foot out the door. They share the same phone, talk about gigs with pay rates in mind, and siphon gas from other cars' tanks as if they were old hands. They're not exactly rolling in it, so this makes sense. When you first meet Pat and his group, you can't help but be impressed with how aggressively money-minded they are. This is an intentional flaw in Saulnier's otherwise flawlessly clean-burning machine. You have to take the bad with the good here: "Green Room" may be too schematic to fully capture the essence of its characters' groddy milieu, but it's also economically paced, and gorgeous. "Green Room" is an overly fussy thriller where dialogue is so direct, and shots are arranged in such a mannered way that you can't help but be distracted by their precision. Pat, an indecisive beta-male who only really comes alive after he witnesses a murder and is subsequently forced to defend his band from militant neo-Nazis, may deliberately sound pretentious. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (" Blue Ruin") explains/apologizes for his general approach to the punk scene in an early scene where fledgling rocker Pat ( Anton Yelchin) explains why his band has no social media presence: you have to be at the show to experience what they're offering, otherwise the "texture" of the music is lost. Punk rock thriller "Green Room" focuses more on the intensity fostered by live punk music than it does the actual sound and feeling of being at a punk show.
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