Lou

There's no other option. We're going to have to kill him.
And then eat him.
dir: Anna Foerster
2022
Lou is the kind of ovaries-to-the-wall action flick starring an older American tv / film movie icon (at least to me) that you rarely if ever get to see these days.
Many action flicks come out every year. They’re perfect for people who hate too much dialogue or speaking or people reaching out to each other across the emotional divide that seems infinite until it isn’t. Lou is tough and uncompromising, and almost dares you not to like it.
Lou (the great Allison Janney) is a no bullshit, no sentiment woman living on an island in the Pacific North West. She has a dog and doesn’t even really seem to like the dog that much, but she does feed him, usually fresh deer that she kills herself.
With her BARE HANDS. Joking. She shoots them THEN finishes them off.
There is a storm coming to the island (of course). On the news that she spies in a local store, or it might have been the bank, Ronald Reagan is denying that any of the Iran / Contra stuff ever happened, or having any involvement in any of it, which was of course a lie. Lou is looking at the screen like maybe she can melt Reagan with her rage alone. It’s funny, because you get the impression that, for whatever reason, Lou personally knows how much what Reagan is saying is pure bullshit.
It’s also telling us when this is all happening. It’s the 80s. There aren’t a lot of Kate Bush needle drops or Madonna hairstyles or fingerless gloves, or kids playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a just a time and place with no mobiles, and few ways to get around on an island without a vehicle.
We watch, as the film begins, an entire sequence where Lou, for reasons of her own, digs up something on her property, burns some stuff, writes a letter to someone, then puts the barrel of a rifle under her chin and prepares to pull the trigger. The story then winds back the day leading up to this moment, and shows it to us again in more detail before it progresses any further.