Stream It or Skip It?

Americana (now streaming on Starz) is one of five Sydney Sweeney films released in 2025, most of them being more of a curiosity than anything trying to capitalize on her sex-symbol ubiquity. Here in Poker Face showrunner Tony Tost’s directorial debut, she plays a diner waitress in a dusty nothing of a town, and despite her prominence on the poster, she’s just one part of an odd ensemble including Paul Walter Hauser, Simon Rex, and pop singer-turned-actress Halsey. Frankly, the movie does her no real favors, dropping a country-girl wig on her head, painting a few freckles on her cheeks and saddling her with a vocal stammer, all of which make her more of a caricature than a character – a problem that applies to everyone in this film, unfortunately.

AMERICANA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Americana begins with the first of a handful of too-cool-for-school chapter headings: PART I: THE OLD NEW WEST. Then it introduces us to a young boy, Cal Starr (Gavin Maddox Bergman), who believes he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull – and we’re either amused or annoyed, and please count me among the latter. Cal’s the offspring of Mandy (Halsey), a dame with a Joan Jett shag cut who’s shacked up with violent asshat Dillon (Eric Dane). Mandy dashes out the trailer claiming she finally got Dillon good, and it’s time to skedaddle, but Cal, calm like Sitting Bull because he believes he’s really Sitting Bull, refuses to go. She pleads but he sits like bull. So she speeds off in the cool vintage muscle car that people in movies like this always drive, leaving the boy literally in the sights of the heavily bleeding Dillon’s pistol – then the kid murders the guy with an arrow to the throat. Uh huh.

PART II is THE BALLAD OF LEFTY AND PENNY JO, which takes place a stretch before the opening scene, because no Tarantino ripoff can proceed without a timehopping narrative. It’s one of the Ten Commandments in the bible, I believe. Anyway, Lefty Ledbetter (Hauser) has proposed to a woman for the fourth time this year, and these wise women have all said nay. He’s a sad desperate nice guy and he takes his rejection into the diner where he chats with demure waitress Penny Jo Poplin (Sweeney), and good lord, these character names. Do they make everyone irrationally angry, or is it just me? They share a moment, then another later in the bar playing pool, then Lefty goes home to his empty house and Penny Jo goes home to her dream of being the next Dolly Parton, and a mean ol’ momma who treats her like shee-it and ridicules her stuttering. Did I mention that Lefty is actually right-handed and his mantra is to tell everyone he meets “I’m Lefty, but I’m actually right-handed”? Well, I just did.

The plot kicks in when Penny Jo’s freshening up yer coffee hon and overhears Dillon working out a deal with slippery sleazoid Roy Lee Dean (Rex). See, there’s this Native American artifact, a “ghost shirt,” that supposedly has supernatural powers, and Roy Lee’s gonna pay Dillon and his flunky Fun Dave (Joe Adler) from a rich blowhard (Toby Huss). Of course, the shirt’s worth far more than the pittance Dillon will earn for the job. Penny Jo talks Lefty into scheming to steal the shirt for themselves so she can sell it and fund a dream-chasing relocation to Nashville. Meanwhile, young Cal encounters a militant Native American group led by Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), who wants the shirt because it belongs to his Lakota people. Of course, said MacGuffin ends up in the trunk of the cool vintage muscle car that people in movies like this always drive, in the driveway of Mandy’s estranged family of ultrareligious cultists. Madness ensues, and rather predictably, I might add.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Americana so desperately wants to be Raising Arizona meets No Country for Old Men meets Pulp Fiction that it forgets to have a creative voice of its own.

Performance Worth Watching: Top-shelf That Guy character actor McClarnon works around the contrivances of this screenplay, finding a subtle comic tone when Ghost Eye gently pushes back against Cal’s appropriation of Sitting Bull; meanwhile, Huss’ cameo taps into the film’s otherwise underwhelming satire by delivering an endlessly pretentious speech that has the other characters in the room rolling their eyes or nodding off. 

Sex And Skin: None.

Our Take: Americana thinks it’s real clever, navigating the irony-saturated tones of 1990s tragicomic post-Tarantino capers, shoving the all-caps QUIRK of its screenplay up our noses, forgoing relatable characters for cartoonish archetypes doomed beneath the cruel guillotine of quasi-nihilistic snark. The Coen Brothers lead a small cadre of filmmakers who can execute this tone effectively, with the pathos and wit this film lacks. Tost’s eyebrow arches so high, the eye beneath it ends up looking down at these characters, which is remarkably easy to do when their dynamics boil down to one or two sympathetic traits commingling with a nonchalant approach to stealing from people and/or pointing guns at them. The desperation of Lefty, Penny Jo and Mandy is something to be snickered at instead of empathized with, and even if that’s not Tost’s intention, that’s what happens when characters’ most prominent features are fancy bolo ties and big hairdos instead of recognizable interior lives.

And so this it’s-just-a-little-bit-of-money-y’know plot is overwritten, populated with woefully underbaked characters. Americana plays out with all the cliches of the ’90s “indie” crime caper, grinding most of its cast up in the gears of its twisty, logic-deprived nonsense. Sweeney struggles the most to transcend the ridiculous mannerisms of her character, and even then, she and Hauser share some emotionally engaging interactions toward which the film shows such disinterest, it allows itself to be distracted by its own convolutions and overwrought displays of bloody violence. If I had a dime for every time I declared the events of Americana to be bullshit, out loud, to no one else in the room but the perceived ghosts of the art of cinema, I’d have like three bucks. That won’t get you very far at the grocery store, but in a two-bit movie like this, it’s a fortune.

Our Call: Americana? You don’t wanna. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.