There’s nothing quite like the magic of a strong ensemble cast. When solid performers come together under a confident vision, even familiar genre tropes can feel fresh again. Americana, the directorial debut from Poker Face showrunner and Damnation creator Tony Tost, is exactly that kind of movie. This stylized and satisfying neo-western thriller blends Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear storytelling with the dry, darkly comic sensibilities of the Coen Brothers. Add a cast led by Sydney Sweeney, Halsey, Paul Walter Hauser, and Zahn McClarnon, and you get an offbeat summer sleeper that punches above its weight.
Divided into quirky, chaptered segments, Americana tells a fractured tale set in South Dakota, where various misfits, criminals, and dreamers cross paths in pursuit of a valuable Lakota ghost shirt, a sacred tribal artifact that has been circulating among shady collectors. Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex), a small-time hustler, finds himself at the center of a blood-soaked spiral when the ghost shirt becomes the prize everyone wants. From there, the shirt changes hands through a cast of wildly different characters: Dillon MacIntosh (Eric Dane), his girlfriend Mandy Starr (Halsey), her son Cal who thinks he’s Sitting Bull (Gavin Lee Maddox), a stammering diner waitress named Penny Jo Poplin (Sydney Sweeney), and Lefty Ledbetter (Hauser), a soft-spoken war veteran with a gentle heart and complicated loyalties. Toss in a cult, a would-be revolutionary named Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), and a hallucinatory cameo from the reincarnated spirit of Sitting Bull, and Americana becomes a cocktail of chaos that somehow holds together.
It’s not always graceful. Tost’s film, while confident, occasionally wobbles under the weight of its influences. A scene in which a killer calmly orders a Cobb salad at a dusty roadside diner plays like Tarantino-lite, and some moments feel more like imitation than homage. Still, Americana pulls itself out of the shadow of its cinematic forebears with enough offbeat personality and character-driven heart to stand on its own.
Sydney Sweeney, despite only being one piece of the ensemble puzzle, is a focal point of the film’s marketing, and understandably so. Her performance as Penny, the shy waitress with a heavy stutter and big Nashville dreams, is one of her more grounded turns. While the role isn’t the showiest, Sweeney’s natural screen presence continues to shine. Her scenes with Paul Walter Hauser’s Lefty are among the film’s most tender. Hauser, often typecast as the eccentric or the outcast, gets to stretch a bit more here; he’s still quirky, but less cartoonish, playing Lefty with understated depth.
Yet the film’s true breakout performance belongs to Halsey. Following a memorable appearance in Ti West’s MaXXXine, the pop star-turned-actress delivers a surprisingly layered portrayal of Mandy Starr, a woman caught between survival and escape. Halsey brings emotional vulnerability to scenes that could’ve easily leaned into melodrama, including several powerful, dialogue-free moments that reveal Mandy’s inner turmoil. On the opposite end of the tonal spectrum, Zahn McClarnon continues his streak of magnetic, scene-stealing performances. As Ghost Eye, an Indigenous revolutionary with an encyclopedic knowledge of Jim Jarmusch films and a razor-sharp view of colonial injustice, McClarnon walks the line between satire and sincerity like a master.
From a technical standpoint, Americana is stylish without being showy. David Fleming’s score adds a modern pulse to the dusty setting, while Nigel Bluck’s cinematography captures the sweeping South Dakota landscape with both grit and beauty. Peter McNulty’s editing keeps the story’s many threads from tangling, allowing Tost’s puzzle-box narrative to unfold with clarity, if not always with momentum.
Yes, Americana owes a lot to the films that paved its way, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, No Country for Old Men. But instead of feeling derivative, the film plays more like a love letter to modern American genre cinema, filtered through the unique voice of a filmmaker with something to say. Tost avoids lazy stereotypes often associated with the American heartland and instead imbues each character with regional specificity and rich, believable motivations. Even the more absurd elements, a cult subplot, and ghostly visions, are handled with a certain level of earned confidence.
Ultimately, Americana doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it offers a character-rich caper with something on its mind and a style all its own. For a film released during the traditionally forgettable late-summer window, it’s a welcome surprise. The film’s ensemble clicks, the story engages, and the direction hints at a promising future for Tony Tost in the feature film space.
Whether you’re here for Sydney Sweeney’s continued genre evolution. Despite some recent controversy surrounding a marketing campaign with American Eagle, Sweeney is absolutely electrifying on-screen. Halsey’s acting chops, or just a solid, quirky crime tale with western flair, Americana is a ride worth taking. Just don’t expect the usual map; this one takes the scenic (and bloody) route.
Grade: B
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Americana
When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.
