America has become a place where people believe the rules and regulations of the country don’t apply to them. They don’t think they should pay taxes or use documents to show who they are. These people refer to themselves as Sovereigns. Which says that they are a government in and of itself. This is a problem for the rest of us who obey the laws of the land. Sovereign shows the problems these types of people pose to the rest of the country. It’s not a pretty site either.

Jerry Kane (Nick Offerman) is a father who believes he doesn’t have to obey the laws of the country. He doesn’t have a driver’s license and doesn’t think he should pay his taxes or mortgage on his house. He has a son Joe (Jacob Tremblay), who is grooming to be just like him, but he wants to have a normal life like any other kid his age. He doesn’t like the police which causes them to both have issues. The overbearing nature of his father is too much for him. He’s in a no-win scenario. He can’t leave his father because he won’t let him. While traveling, they end up in a life and death situation.

The country is full of militias and malcontents who won’t obey the laws of the land. They use fake documents and fancy wording to defend their existence in society. This man went around trying to convert others to his cause. I think it’s lazy people who don’t want to do an honest day’s work. They make excuses why the government is against them. Sometimes, these people use religion as a means to an end, but in the case of this man, he didn’t. He used documents as a means to an end. In the end, they didn’t work for him. It just made people more mad at him.

Besides Offerman and Tremblay, the cast of the film is pretty good. Martha Plimpton played a friend of the Offerman character who helped bail him out of jail. She is one of his converts. Dennis Quaid and Thomas Mann play father and son. One is an established police detective, and the other is a freshly minted policeman on duty. They are very close. In fact, they ride together to work each morning. And Nancy Travis plays Quaid’ character’s wife and Mann’s character’s mother. They are a close family. This is a small cast, but it’s a solid one. Offerman steals the show, though, as this man who is out for himself and his son.

Christian Swegal, the writer/director of this film, splits the story and scenes into two distinct storylines. One that involves Offerman and Tremblay’s characters as they try to disobey the laws of the country and eventually go on the run from the law. The second story involves Quaid’s and Mann in their daily routine as police officers in rural Arkansas. The movie is basically split into two-thirds with Offerman and Tremblay and one-third with Quaid and Mann. Eventually, these two pairs of fathers and sons come into contact with each other with deathly tragic consequences. Swegal wants to show the dichotomy of the two pairs. One represents the law and the other, not. It’s fascinating.  

I feel like there wasn’t enough of the Quaid and Mann pair to make me care about them as much as the other pair. There was no real motivating factor for these two like there was for the other two. The son having to listen to his father wasn’t very good for him because he wanted a different life. I felt bad for him in a way because he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Offerman played this man, very demanding,  angry, and overbearing,  but also calm and calculated at times. Using reason to defend his mantra. It’s almost like a religious figure loading over his flock. It’s quite disturbing, to say the least.

Sovereign asks a lot of questions but doesn’t give a lot of answers. It shows this man who has these beliefs, and he’s trying to pass them on to his son, who just wants to live a normal life. The police get in their way with tragic results. I wasn’t sure what the point was to show these people if they weren’t going to have any kind of good results at the end of the story. Swegal wants to make all the characters engaging but fails with the policeman.  There were no real answers to whether or not sovereignty is a means to an end for real people in society or just a means to an end to tell this specific story. I was scratching my head at the conclusion of this film.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen