‘Americana’ Review: Sydney Sweeney and Halsey Star in Tony Tost’s Bloody, Tender Contemporary Western
Lionsgate
A violent, ironic, and unexpectedly human reimagining of the Western, anchored by Sydney Sweeney’s quiet resilience and Halsey’s magnetic breakout turn.
Tony Tost’s Americana, distributed by Lionsgate and opening August 15, 2025, arrives as one of the most intriguing genre debuts of the year. On the surface, it is a gritty neo-Western thriller about stolen artifacts, murder, and small-town corruption. But peel away its layers, and the film reveals a startlingly tender reflection on desperation, survival, and the often contradictory ways Americans cling to myth while living through decay. It’s messy, jagged, and blood-soaked — yet also deeply human.
The premise is deceptively straightforward. A stolen Lakota ghost shirt sets the story in motion, acting as both a literal and symbolic artifact of contested ownership and stolen legacy. As competing forces — treasure hunters, criminals, small-town schemers, and everyday dreamers — circle around it, Americana becomes a meditation on who gets to control America’s stories, and who ends up trampled underfoot. Tost, a former academic and poet, infuses the screenplay with a mix of Tarantino-esque stylization and Cormac McCarthy-style fatalism. His dialogue has a literary weight that occasionally strains for effect, but more often sharpens the ironic tension between characters who view violence as both a necessity and an inheritance.
Lionsgate
Sydney Sweeney anchors the film with a performance that is quiet but magnetic. As Penny Jo, a waitress caught up in the bloody orbit of the artifact hunt, she plays against her rising Hollywood type. Gone is the glossy bravado of Euphoria or the stylized allure of Madame Web; instead, she wears exhaustion on her face, shoulders hunched with the weight of a life defined by compromise. What’s remarkable is how Sweeney makes stillness her weapon. When she looks across a smoky barroom or a half-lit parking lot, the film suddenly feels like it’s holding its breath. Her performance is not about grand declarations, but about what happens when survival demands silence and complicity.
Halsey, in her acting debut as Mandy Starr, is the revelation of the film. Best known for her pop career, she approaches the role with raw edges intact, giving Mandy a feral charisma that feels dangerous and electric. Her chemistry with Sweeney isn’t conventionally warm, but rather jagged — two women circling each other in a world that treats them as disposable, finding in one another the faint possibility of recognition. It’s a magnetic dynamic, and Lionsgate has been smart to position Halsey as the film’s breakout star. While her line delivery can sometimes wobble, the sheer presence she brings — part punk swagger, part desperate vulnerability — makes her unforgettable.
Paul Walter Hauser, always a scene-stealer, leans into menace as one of the film’s more chaotic forces. His gift for finding humor in brutality gives Americana its strangest tonal shifts: a murder scene punctuated by awkward small talk, or a threat delivered with disarming politeness. Zahn McClarnon brings gravitas as a Lakota character connected to the artifact’s stolen legacy, grounding the film whenever it threatens to tip into pastiche. Together, the ensemble balances Tost’s sharp tonal contrasts: the violence is operatic, but the emotions remain intimate.
Lionsgate
Visually, Americana straddles the line between myth and realism. The cinematography favors wide, empty South Dakota landscapes, skies stretching endlessly above isolated diners, gas stations, and motels. Yet rather than romanticizing the frontier, the film presents it as bleak and unforgiving. Dust, neon, and blood dominate the palette. The ghost shirt itself becomes a haunting visual motif — both sacred and desecrated, revered and defiled. Tost seems keenly aware of the contradictions embedded in the Western genre: the beauty of its landscapes, the brutality of its history, and the enduring temptation to mythologize violence as destiny.
The film is not without flaws. At nearly two hours, Americana occasionally loses momentum, particularly in its middle section. Tost juggles multiple character arcs, and not all of them land with equal weight. A subplot involving small-town officials feels undercooked, and some of the stylized dialogue can veer into self-consciousness. Yet even in its uneven stretches, there’s an undeniable energy at play — the sense of a filmmaker swinging hard at a well-worn genre with new tools and unapologetic ambition.
What elevates Americana is its refusal to offer easy answers. Unlike traditional Westerns, where morality is often starkly defined, Tost paints in shades of gray. Violence here is rarely cathartic; it’s messy, cowardly, and often absurd. When Sweeney’s Penny Jo finally takes decisive action, it is less about heroism than about resignation — a survival instinct forged in a world that has offered her no other path. The irony, and perhaps the tragedy, is that the film’s most powerful act of defiance still feels like another surrender to the endless cycle of blood.
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Americana lands at a moment when the Western is resurging in unexpected ways, from prestige television (Yellowstone, Lawmen: Bass Reeves) to arthouse cinema (The Power of the Dog). Yet unlike those projects, Tost’s film feels scrappier, less polished, and more attuned to the anxieties of the present. It’s about stolen land and stolen stories, yes, but also about economic despair, gendered violence, and the fraying of communal bonds. Its title isn’t ironic; it’s descriptive. This is America — brutal, desperate, contradictory, and clinging to myth even as the ground shifts beneath it.
By the time the credits roll, the audience may not feel satisfied, but they will feel unsettled — and that seems to be exactly Tost’s intention. Americana is not a perfect film, but it is an urgent one. In Sweeney and Halsey, it finds two performers willing to drag the Western into raw new territory, with all the scars, sweat, and contradictions intact.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
That's A Wrap
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Americana [2023]
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That's A Wrap | Americana [2023] |
“Americana doesn’t fully reinvent the Western, but with Sydney Sweeney’s vulnerability and Halsey’s fierce screen debut, it injects raw humanity into the blood-soaked chaos.”
Credit Block
Airdate: August 15, 2025 | Theatrical Release
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Halsey, Paul Walter Hauser, Eric Dane, Zahn McClarnon
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director: Tony Tost
Runtime: 1h 47m
Genres: Mystery & Thriller, Crime, Drama
Rating: R
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