The subject of school shootings continues to be a hot button topic in America, and it’s with no small bit of irony that a young Canadian filmmaker challenges us to re-examine our preconceived notions about these events in The Dirties, the latest release from Phase 4 Films and The Kevin Smith Movie Club. Written and directed by Matt Johnson (who also stars), the film follows a pair of high school students working on a project for their film class, a Tarantino-esque revenge tale that sees them portraying a pair of renegade detectives hell-bent on taking out a group of bullies they’ve dubbed “The Dirties.”
It quickly becomes evident that Matt and Owen (Owen Williams) are using this assignment as an outlet for their own frustration, an opportunity to live out a fantasy which casts them as the heroes, standing up for the little guys. This revelation is clearly lost on their teacher, whose only concern is excising the violence and profanity from the film before allowing it to be screened for their fellow students, a move which transforms the completed product from an indictment of the school’s ruling class to yet another embarrassing episode which reinforces how much the boys don’t fit in with their peers.
Determined to make a statement, Matt offers up another approach – why not make a movie about a school shooting? How would people react to a film about two kids that have finally decided to stand up for themselves, a pair of teenage vigilantes trying to make the hallways a safer place by taking out every douchebag that ever stuffed another kid into a locker or threw a classmate’s clothes into the shower during gym class?
As Matt’s excitement and enthusiasm grows, Owen becomes increasingly suspicious that his pal might be planning to inject his next feature with a startling dose of realism, especially when he takes a trip to the shooting range with his older cousin and spends an afternoon poring over blueprints for the high school, charting where to find each of “The Dirties” at any given hour. But the boys have known each other forever, and despite a lifetime of being on the wrong end of a bully’s fists, Owen knows that Matt wouldn’t really hurt anyone… right?
Perpetrators of school violence are always cast as ruthless, cold-blooded killers, but with The Dirties, Johnson forces us to look at the other side of the coin, creating relatable, sympathetic characters that are easily recognizable. We’ve probably all known kids like Matt and Owen – hell, we may have been them ourselves – and as we watch them get pushed further and further toward their limit, we start to understand how someone can be moved to retaliate.
Does that mean that committing unspeakable acts of violence is an acceptable form of resolution? Of course not, and if that’s what you take away from The Dirties then you’ve clearly missed the point. But Johnson isn’t pretending to have all the right answers – he just wants us to start asking the right questions. And maybe he’s onto something.