American Honey

       American Honey brings a reality check into America’s poverty  and its youth, a window into the lives of kids from the heartland, finding their way  into adulthood, not always searching in the right place or with the right crowd, but nevertheless learning from the experience, sharing their  uncertainties and desires, and most  all, having fun. The crew of actors, Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough, and non-actors, including Sasha Lane as Star, the protagonist of the story, blends together beautifully.  At times the film reads like a documentary. It’s raw, it’s real. The music is a very powerful  source of adrenaline with a mix of hard core rap and country songs. The movie  promises a good plot and an engaging story: teenagers first-real-life-job selling door to door magazine subscriptions. Their first shot at independence. Sadly, the editing job is deficient: scenes become repetitive, including sex scenes and  van rides.The movie lasts close to three unnecessary hours. I am suspicious of writers and filmmakers who do not dare to cut, edit, delete  the extra material they create; they get so infatuated with their genius, or  so emotionally involved with the scenes, that they fail miserably at sorting what is really meaningful and relevant in a story, and what is ultimately, crap. By the way it is interesting to watch how different  the movie trailers from US and Australia really are. The  editor, Joe Bini, and British director, Andrea  Arnold, should have shrunk the movie to a more traditional time frame. (Not saying that traditional should be the norm), but in this case, it could have worked wonders with the great material they had. It could have been an amazing movie, but it falls short of the editing part. It could have made the list  of the classic  growing up, coming of age, road trip  films if only… Still, it delivers mesmerizing scenes. An excellent  movie, worth watching. If you have seen American Honey, I am interested in finding out  what you think.