Johnny Greyeyes

Johnny Greyeyes is about an incarcerated indigenous woman. Those are identities that fiction and especially film rarely focus on. Furthermore, in real life, those same identities are often actively silenced. As a film, Johnny Greyeyes is fully aware of this lack of representation and comes from an earnest, passionate and empathetic place when depicting it. All of that and my goodwill towards the project got me through about half the movie. After the halfway point though, my goodwill became less blinding and more and more of the flaws in this low-budget movie began to overtake my feelings of positivity.

Johnny Greyeyes utilizes a non-linear format to tell its story. The earliest scene is of protagonist, Johnny discussing her impending release from prison. But quickly after she reestablishes herself in the outside world, the film flashes back. Through these flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, we see Johnny’s time in prison. Specifically, her romance her fellow prisoner, Lana. Additionally, there’s some flashbacks to Johnny’s earlier years, specifically focusing on her brother. At the same time Johnny is being released from prison, her brother is primed to fall back into criminal ways and commit a robbery.

Honestly, the main positive to Johnny Greyeyes is just the choice to focus this story on an often unheard voice. Johnny’s identity as an indigenous woman already makes this film stand out from almost all WLW films as indigenous queer women feature rarely onscreen. And again, the portrayal of an indigenous queer woman is coming from a place of empathy, understanding and at least in the case of the indigenous identity, personal experience on the part of the creator. I can really see director/co-writer Jorge Manzano’s passion to tell stories and specifically to tell this story. Even in this admittedly flawed realization of the story, Manzano shows great skill at empathy in his filmmaking.

Because the film overall is so empathetic, it took a while for me to realize how bad the acting was. Because I wanted the acting to be good. Johnny is a pretty well-realized character who feels real. But her line reads detract from that feeling. And she’s far from the worst actress. Weirdly, the prison guards in the film are uniformly the worst. Maybe it was a creative choice? But it was a poor one. It becomes increasingly hard to take the building drama of Johnny Greyeyes seriously because of the acting. And I swear it gets worse as it goes on. Or maybe there’s just more scenes with prison guards in the back half of the film.

The film’s pacing issues become more apparent the closer it gets to the end. And then it ends and you’re left asking, was that it? The ending feels extremely rushed. Much of the conflict in the second half is about Johnny’s brother. After all, we already know how Johnny’s story ends. Her story in the film’s second half is all flashbacks prior to her release from prison. So, the main driving conflict comes from the brother’s story. This story wasn’t adequately set up in the first half and then takes up more and more time in the second half. Yet despite it taking up more time, its conclusion feels staggeringly rushed in a way that detracts from what came before it. Really, the film shouldn’t have had two distinct storylines. At 75 minutes, just Johnny in prison or the brother’s story would fill a movie without the second plot.

I wanted so much for Johnny Greyeyes to be good. Beyond its underrepresented protagonist, there’s such a strong sense throughout the film of Jorge Manzano’s passion and talent as a storytelling. But so many of the decisions and limitations brought on by budget hinder that story from reaching its full potential. This film really does seem to get worse as it goes on. Or maybe it was just that in early scenes I could say this film had potential. But as it continues, you can actively see it not reach that potential.

Overall rating: 5.0/10

Other WLW films in similar genres