RedSin: Martyrs of Dissent: Responses to Trauma Goes Many (and Side) Ways

At forty-nine minutes, Christopher Ortiz’s RedSin: Martyrs of Dissent is the feature developed from its 18-minute proof-of-concept RedSin (2021). An action-packed narrative dealing with the fallout of desperate men’s deeds in desperate times, it ramps up the stakes like a video game until its protagonist is facing the ultimate boss: his brother.

War veterans, now grizzled old men, get taken down by an invisible hand—the only hint of their existence is the fatal laser dot that precedes a bullet—while a decades old history emerges in patches of exposition that juxtapose a tale of poverty, war-time embezzlement and shame with a very imminent bioterrorism conspiracy.

In addition to a motley of characters, the narrative focal points keep shifting until they settle on the biblical brothers, Jenson (Jay Welch) and Nathan (Leo Giannopoulos), for the climax. From a CIA agent’s bid to enforce law and order, to one of the last surviving members of the offending Gulf war squad, there are multiple storylines that are related but threaten to take off on their own.

The former, Agent Patrick Burns is on the hunt for the mysterious RedSin group and its leader, Nathan, before they release a deadly virus into the city’s water supply. Gregg Schulls, now known as Jack Polaski, is in hiding after the events that brought disaster to him, his family and his squad. Of them all, Jack is doing his best to live anew. And yet, when Burns pays him a visit in his humble barber’s shop, all that effort goes up in flames once again.

Action is the film’s highlight, with fight sequences (between Jenson and whoever is his latest adversary) choreographed and performed well enough that each time it is easy to mistake the antagonists for supervillains. Of course, this just reinforces the urgency of the good guys’ mission (and mystifies Russia as the enemy) as your all-American hero faces off against nameless, lithe, ultra-skilled bodies aiming for maximum damage.

Budget constraints are visible but the film circumnavigates them deftly, particularly when it comes to gunshots. Without the benefit of a special effects team, the film has to rely on sound design (already deployed to great success in hand-to-hand combat sequences), editing and the actors to pull off injuries that simply cannot be shown.

In scenes when the narrative is more dramatic than violent, Haneen Arafat Murphy as the McKane brothers’ mother is a grounding presence, bringing much needed shine to the writing. Here, the memory of Nathan McKane Sr. haunts the family as the leader of the disgraced squad. Indeed, his legacy haunts not only his sons and wife, but also his squad mates.

Caught in a web of intense scrutiny, condemnation, and executive obscurity, everyone involved is sentenced to a life of trauma, loss, and indignity. RedSin: Martyrs of Dissent packs in multiple layers of story, and what with its multi-decade span, it certainly is an ambitious first feature for its director.

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