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Having served in Iraq, Milles (Robert LaSardo) has returned with a severe case of PTSD, something his former brother-in-arms, physiotherapist Tai (Rich R. Rendon) treats him for, but progress is modest - until Milles meets Melissa (Lorelei Linklater), a hippie girl half his age with whom he bonds over a shared and actually quite innocent fascination with Charles Manson. The two soon become a couple, and his life completely turns around - and then one day, she's kidnapped, raped and murdered, which pushes him back into darkness. Enter Mandy (Gigi Gustin), Melissa's sister whom he has never met while Melissa was alive, who has an exceptionally big heart, and who wants to pull Milles back into the light, and the two of them soon bond over, of all things, hiking and collecting trash along the trail. And even if he sometimes gets overly agitated about people just leaving their trash and not expecting mother nature. Melissa usually manages to reigm him in though, and she makes some (if modest) progress in calming Milles down. Then though, a friend of theirs, Linda (Elissa Dowling) is attacked in the open street and severely injured, and her boyfriend is killed - and this sends Milles off to the deep end, and the next person (Cuete Yeska) he catches polluting mother nature, doesn't come away with a stern warning or even a slight scare, as Milles is back in combat mode ...

Costas Mandylor and the late Tom Sizemore play cops investigating Melissa's murder.

American Trash is a very compelling and quite disturbing drama about grief and how (not) to deal with it, and even though Robert LaSardo's Milles is anything but your middle-of-the-road character, and his Charles Manson obsession sounds anything but sane, his character arc comes across as 100% relatable thanks to a strong and well-structured script - and of course also thanks to LaSardo's performance, who really seems to enjoy giving his all here after playing way too many one-dimensional roles in genre cinema (not that he doesn't excel in those as well though). Now the thing as a whole isn't exactly light entertainment but a pretty thoughtful film - and all the more worthwhile for it.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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