Americana Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Americana Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 27, 2025

Americana was evidently shot in 2022, long before co-star Sydney Sweeney had her brush with memes and internet notoriety courtesy of an ad campaign, but this neo-Western is indeed a film featuring a lot of jeans, though their quality may be debatable. This is a sprawling narrative featuring an ensemble cast that is maybe writer and director Tony Tost's own riff on efforts like Magnolia, wherein a large aggregation of characters without any seeming initial connection end up in a maelstrom of their own making. The story begins in medias res, introducing a sweet little boy named Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman) who, despite not having the appropriate, well, genes, insists he's the reincarnation of Sitting Bull. Very quickly Cal's already precarious home situation devolves when his addled mother Mandy (Halsey) takes a hammer to the head of her abusive boyfriend Dillon Macintosh (Eric Dane), soon zooming off in his muscle car for safer climes, but more or less abandoning Cal, who claims he has to remain on his "ancestral land". Suffice it to say Dillon turns out to be "not quite dead yet", something Cal's facility with a bow and arrow soon rectifies. This abrupt and disconcerting opening turns out to be a kind of "second chapter" in the tale, that then segues back to pick up various other plot elements before continuing past this particular scenario to involve even more mayhem.

The underlying "McGuffin" of the story is a so-called "Ghost Shirt", a priceless Lakota artifact that has come into the possession of a non-Native American local bigwig. A black market dealer named Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) is hoping to have the shirt purloined so that he can sell it for big bucks, hiring Dillon to do the dirty work. The result probably unsurprisingly turns out to be a cluster you-know-what, with Dillon and cohort Fun Dave (Joe Adler) basically killing a house full of people in order to get the shirt. Fun Dave is soon an ex-character as well, and as has already been detailed, Dillon isn't long for the world himself, which then means that the stolen ghost shirt resides in the trunk of his muscle car, unbeknownst to Mandy, who has scrambled off to Wyoming, reuniting with her fundamentalist father Hiram (Christopher Kriesa) and his house full of appropriately "submissive" women.

Meanwhile aforementioned waitress Penny Jo has become aware of the theft, with would be boyfriend Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser), teaming up with her to follow Mandy to try to get the shirt for themselves, with the idea that selling it could help fund Penny Jo's dreams of country music stardom. Also meanwhile, little Cal has probably shared a bit too much about his presumed status as a reincarnated Lakota chief with a militant local Native American named Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), a discussion which alludes to the location of the Ghost Shirt, which of course then sends a whole new group off in pursuit of it, this time with Cal as a perceived hostage.

Kind of unbelievably, things get even more chaotic in an absolutely calamitous third act which sees a whole series of alternately comic and horrifying shootouts between all sorts of competing interests, leading to a Hamlet adjacent body count. There's probably too much stuffed into this film for its own good, and the characters while all rather distinctive in their own ways are not overly innovative, giving the effort a bit of a tired quality, despite some rather smart writing and a generous supply of neo-Western "action".

Americana Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Americana is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The making of featurette shows Arri cameras, but rather interestingly this apparently had a 35mm "film out" if what I've been gleaning from rather sparse online information is correct. That gives the general appearance here a nicely organic quality, but as perhaps can be made out by close examination of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, there is something odd going on recurrently toward the right side of the frame in particular, where imagery looks blurry and even refracted, which might suggest a defective lens. That anomaly aside, detail levels are generally excellent and Tost and cinematographer Nigel Bluck make the most of the southwestern locations. This probably intentionally does not offer the crystal clear clarity that typically accompanies digital captures and in fact a lot of shots look deliberately soft.

Americana Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Americana features a nicely boisterous Dolby Atmos track. Surround activity is consistent, with good attention paid to ambient environmental effects throughout the many outdoor scenes, but with some real energy offered in the absolutely gonzo finale which sees all sorts of gunfire and associated mayhem break out. Both David Fleming's underscore and a number of source cues also confidently reside in the surround channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.

Americana Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director Tony Tost


• A Western Fairy Tale: The Making of Americana (HD; 10:41) is a typical EPK with interviews and behind the scenes footage.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:07)

DVD and digital copies are included.

Americana Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A simmering subtext of cultural appropriation which repeatedly bubbles to the surface of this tale couldn't help but remind me (perhaps appropriately, given the tribe at the center of the film) of Joni Mitchell's great tune Lakota, which included the ultimately unfortunate participation of "Iron Eyes Cody", whom trivia lovers will remember was "outed" as not actually having any Native American ancestry. There's some rather provocative content on tap here, but Tost may actually be a bit too ambitious for his own good in terms of offering so much content and so many disparate characters that things start to fray after a while. Still, this offers some smart writing and good performances, with generally solid technical merits. Recommended.