Stonewall – first look review

In Stonewall, Roland Emmerich does to the dig­ni­ty of New York’s bur­geon­ing LGBT com­mu­ni­ty what he did to the White House in Inde­pen­dence Day. This children’s book-esque ver­sion of the sto­ry chart­ing the three months lead­ing up to the famous Stonewall riots of the late ​’60s is twelve indis­tin­guish­able shades of vanil­la, with Jere­my Irvine’s ​“Kansas farm boy” run­away, Dan­ny, step­ping up as the charis­ma-tun­dra focal point, a non-pres­ence in a non-movie.

Forced to flee from Small Town Amer­i­ca where the days are wiled away indoc­tri­nat­ing high-school­ers with homo­pho­bic pro­pa­gan­da, the teach­ers them­selves snick­er­ing when the kids start hol­ler­ing about ​“dirty fag­gots”, our hero ends up des­ti­tute in Green­wich Vil­lage which has already become a grub­by hub for the gay/​counterculture move­ment. In a cru­el twist of fate, his straight-shoot­ing pops is also the school foot­ball coach who goes about his job like an army drill sergeant, so any hope of fam­i­ly repa­ra­tions is out of the question.

With­in sec­onds he’s forced to fend off the advances of old­er men want­i­ng to give him an extra hot dog for his lunch, but is saved by Ray (Jon­ny Beauchamp), an extro­vert gay hus­tler who takes the lantern-jawed new­bie under his feath­er boa. Through­out the film, Irvine has two per­for­mance modes: first­ly it’s the wide-eyed gawp as he wan­ders through clan­des­tine gay bars filled with men lux­u­ri­at­ing in the free-spir­it­ed plea­sures he thought that soci­ety had denied him; sec­ond­ly we have the ​“I can’t believe you did that!” scowl, bran­dished when he’s walk­ing away from an(other) awk­ward sit­u­a­tion or fiery alter­ca­tion. Both are awful.

The shops, bars and board­ing hous­es are recre­at­ed with lav­ish peri­od detail, so it’s a shame that Jon Robin Baitz’s screen­play is a hepatitic cock­tail of soap opera clichés and woe­ful, wannabe-salty one lin­ers. Emmerich is clear­ly a direc­tor who believes that get­ting to the essen­tial truth of a mat­ter in cin­e­ma is a case of get­ting era-cor­rect labels on food cans. There’s even the feel­ing that he’s is slight­ly ashamed of the more open­ly gay char­ac­ters in the film, as he lov­ing­ly ham­mers home the con­cept that gay peo­ple can wear suits too, that they can immerse them­selves in the het­ero mass­es and live in rel­a­tive har­mo­ny with The Ene­my if desired.

Ron Perl­man turns up as the crooked boss of the Stonewall Inn, step­ping in with his Mafia con­nec­tions to take advan­tage of a gap in the mar­ket left by a law stat­ing that it’s ille­gal to sell alco­hol to homo­sex­u­als. A straight-arrow cop wants to take him down, and it’s his con­tin­u­ous busts which even­tu­al­ly cause bricks to be tossed and fires to be start­ed. The infa­mous riot itself is a mut­ed affair, with the police offi­cers dash­ing into the night when over­pow­ered by their LGBT combatants.

Remem­ber­ing that Emmerich is one of the worst work­ing direc­tors in the world, the cen­tral prob­lem with this recep­ta­cle of hot garbage that he rejects the com­bustible camp spir­it of his char­ac­ters in favour of a strained faux-seri­ous­ness, like he’s tak­ing the role of teacher rather than film direc­tor. It’s even filmed in mud­dy brown tones with swatch­es of gold­en light, sug­gest­ing cosy fire­side nos­tal­gia and not des­per­ate penury and grass­roots revolution.

There’s no lev­i­ty here, and any hint of fun is swift­ly sup­pressed in a corny bid to mine the sup­pos­ed­ly com­plex emo­tions of the sit­u­a­tion. Sure, it’s not like we should’ve expect­ed Roland Emmerich to sud­den­ly make a Robert Alt­man film, but this is so but­toned-up, dewy-eyed and reduc­tive that the air-punch­ing cli­max leaves no last­ing impact. It’s so lack­adaisi­cal and sim­plis­tic that it doesn’t even have the legs to stand as a mid­night kitsch classic.