Two of the most dangerous political theories in America are also two of the most overlooked. First, there is the Prosperity Gospel, the idea that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing (the connection between that heresy and Donald Trump’s rise demands more study). And then there’s the idea of sovereign citizens.
It’s a political philosophy based on a simple idea: If the state derives its power from the people, then the people have the right to withdraw from the state and become a sovereign nation of one. That this theory has only ever resonated with people who’d be hard pushed to finish a Wikipedia page on citizenship, never mind a book on constitutional law, is no surprise.
This particular species of brain worms has, of course, found fertile breeding grounds among Christian and White nationalists, and has often been a factor in terrorist incidents like the Oklahoma City bombing and the Bundy ranch standoff. So the journey undertaken in tragic drama Sovereign seems destined to end up drenched in blood, as a portentous flash-forward opening suggests, with police radio chatter about a deadly shooting. The only question is, whose body lies on the tarmac?
Writer/director Christian Swegal’s debut feature (which premiered at the Tribeca Festival ahead of its July 11 release by Briarcliffe Entertainment) draws heavily on the real life 2010 West Memphis shootings, in which self-declared sovereign citizen Jerry Kane and his son, Joseph, murdered West Memphis officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans. Yet it’s less a recounting than a warning.
Whatever happens, it’s all going to spill out from the actions of Jerry Kane, a seething, pompous, bullnecked, crewcut-sporting radical who has brought into the sovereign citizen shtick hook, line, and sinker. It would be easy to believe that he’s just a con man, sporting a white suit that would make a backroom preacher blush at the pretentiousness as he holds education sessions for rubes with tax gripes and properties under water. But as he drags his 15-year-old son, Joe (Jacob Tremblay, The Life of Chuck, Room), around Northwest Arkansas, it’s clear he’s a true believer.
It would be easy to make Jerry a cardboard villain, a ruddy-faced redneck with too many guns and a pathological hatred of institutional power. It’s in the utterly brilliant casting of Nick Offerman as this shattered and dangerous man that the film finds its catastrophic equilibrium. After all, Offerman’s work in the last few years has been about masculinity, and the idea that being openly sensitive is not antithetical to many things that have historically been considered manly (or, more simply, you can cry at Old Yeller and still know how to start a camp fire).
His career-defining role of Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation was part of that conversation, a man who couldn’t always see beyond his own overly-coiffed moustache. It’s not hard to see Jerry as Offerman’s apologia for all those people who saw Ron as a hero – or at least to place him in a real-world context. Real-world Ron would be alarmingly close to Jerry, rambling about government overreach, spouting legal rulings of their own creation. But while Ron had an avuncular charm, Jerry is in a constant state of sweaty denial, convinced he’s raising Joe right and that he can just will bailiffs and courts and cops away with some legal mumbo-jumbo.
His performance is designed to be big and blustering, to show how much damage he does to Joe and to his kinda-girlfriend, Lesley Anne (an exceptional Martha Plimpton). It’s also a counterpoint to another surprising turn from Dennis Quaid as his exact opposite, a cop with actual parenting skills. What’s bizarre is that real-life MAGA Republican has, as with his grotesque display of shrimp-sucking in The Substance, turned in a truly progressive performance. In the inevitable standoff between he and Offerman, Sovereign becomes a great American tragedy,
Sovereign
Spotlight Narrative, World Premiere
This article appears in June 13 • 2025.
