20 Underrated Recent Movies You Might Have Missed

5. Sovereign

Sovereign Nick Offerman
Briarcliff

Few films from the past year have been more unjustly ignored than Sovereign - a crime thriller starring Nick Offerman as real-life figure Jerry Kane, an anti-government extremist or "sovereign citizen" who ends up clashing with a local police chief (Dennis Quaid).

It might not sound like the sexiest premise for a movie, but writer-director Christian Swegal does a fantastic job plunging the audience into the inner workings of the sovereign citizen movement, while opting to observe rather than make overt judgments.

Offerman is phenomenal as a man living on the fringes of society, and whose increasingly alarming behaviour drags his teenage son Joe (an also brilliant Jacob Tremblay) down with him.

Given the political moment the United States is in, and how this subculture is so thoroughly under-explored in media, it's a damn shame that Sovereign largely fell upon deaf ears.

But if you're in the market for a taut, ultimately sad, ripped-from-the-headlines crime thriller, this is leagues ahead of most true crime "slopumentaries" flooding streaming services these days.

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.