Roland Emmerich fails to capture the energy and passion his latest film so desperately needs.
Roland Emmerich may be known for his disaster films, but the Independence Day director has created a different kind of catastrophe with his latest historical drama Stonewall. Loosely based on the Stonewall riots of 1969 — widely considered one of the major starting points of the gay rights movement — the film follows a fictional young man named Danny (War Horse’s Jeremy Irvine), who is kicked out of his parents’ home and flees to Greenwich Village, New York, in the hope of finding acceptance as a homosexual. In the months leading up to the riots, Danny learns what it means to be gay, thanks to a group of fellow street kids who show him the ropes.
Alas, not only does Stonewall lack any subtlety, but it also focuses on all the wrong parts of the story — namely, it’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed, made-up protagonist (which in itself has landed Emmerich in some hotwater as the real riots featured a far more diverse array of protesters at their forefront). This includes numerous, angst-ridden flashbacks to Danny’s former life in Indiana that have nothing to do with the riots nor any of the other characters. Then there’s Danny’s overextended learning period in New York, which plays like a bad high school production of Newsies or Rent — that is to say, it’s drastically over-the-top.
We want to hear it.
It doesn’t help that the claustrophobic sets were clearly shot on a soundstage. (Stonewall was filmed in Montreal instead of New York to save money.) While Emmerich brings his blockbuster sensibilities to the camerawork and lighting to make the scenes seem more dynamic, it’s not enough to make his flimsy Christopher Street feel authentic. Even the eponymous Stonewall Inn is only used a handful of times and never becomes the gay “safe haven” it’s meant to represent.
It’s almost as if Emmerich wanted to tell a completely different story and just decided to use the Stonewall riots as a backdrop. Except that the riots don’t even start until the last act of the movie and are quickly ended within one 10-minute scene (despite the fact that the actual riots lasted for days). And while real-life protesters like Marsha P. Johnson and Frank Kameny are on the periphery of the story, their significance isn’t felt until after the movie is over, when onscreen epilogues explain what happened to them years later.
To Stonewall’s credit, there are a few solid performances here. Penny Dreadful’s Jonny Beauchamp plays Danny’s scrappy young mentor Ray/Ramona, and gets several good scenes of his own. Meanwhile, there’s an intriguing crime subplot involving Ron Perlman and Matt Craven’s characters, but it’s never fully explored. And again, the dialogue is so clumsy and heavy-handed that it’s hard not to scoff at most of the characters’ lines, as they say exactly what’s on their mind at all times with zero subtext. Suffice to say, 129 minutes of that is nothing short of a chore.
I’m sure Roland Emmerich had the best intentions creating his own version of the Stonewall riots, but the movie itself is a total slog and doesn’t give proper due to the actual riots. Instead, the story focuses on an imaginary white male lead and uses the much more real elements as set dressing (sometimes literally). While the director’s distinct style helps mask some of the cheap sets, Stonewall’s ham-fisted dialogue, inconsistent tone and one-note characters undermine what little substance there is. Hopefully, the same historical event will get the adaptation it deserves in a future project made by somebody else.
