Bushwick may be too timely as it depicts the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn breaking out into an all-out civil war.

Directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott from a screenplay written by Nick Damici and Graham Reznick, the military invasion thriller stars Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Angelic Zambrana, Christian Navarro, Arturo Castro, and Jeremie Harris.

As Lucy (Snow) comes home from college and gets off of a New York subway stop in Bushwick, the neighborhood is not as she remembers it.  In fact, another civil war has erupted as Texas is trying to secede from the union.  How a Texas secession causes an all-out war in New York is baffling to say the least.

Lucy gets out of harm’s way and finds safety in a basement belonging to a former Marine, Stupe (Bautista).  Stupe is heading out of the city in searh of his family.  The pair is not the most likely one would think about regarding a team-up but they hold their own during the chaos as they try to escape the gunfire and explosions.  It’s not until late in the film when they learn about the new civil war as the Bushwick citizens fight the militia.  It soon becomes a race for survival for the two of them to leave the city.

A very realistic movie, co-directors Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott were inspired seven years ago by comments about secession made by then-Texas Governor Rick Perry.  The issues that divided the country back then continue to divide the United States today.

“Our fictional storyboards looked eerily similar to the scenes we saw on the news from Paris – contemporary storefronts and cafes smoking and destroyed as snipers hid on rooftops,” the filmmakers said.  “Recently, as we finished the long process of post-production, we again watch as the United States becomes even more politically, economically and racially divided because of the 2016 Presidential election.”

Through both the writing and directing, what we see on screen could easily have been from an embedded documentary with the long continuous takes as it feels so realistic but not so realistic that you believe you’re watching an actual documentary or even found footage.  Bushwick keeps us with Lucy and Stupe in real time from start to finish as they keep our focus on them.  Gone are the quick edits that we’re so used to seeing in action films.  Despite the situation being what it is, Bushwick brings with it a feeling of intimacy, authenticity, and credibility.

For Brittany Snow, her performance as Lucy in the film is much different than that of her roles in American Dreams and Pitch Perfect.  Bautista is certainly no Drax the Destroyer in this film but it’s a nice change of pace seeing him on screen without all the makeup required for Guardians of the Galaxy.

RLJ Entertainment will release Bushwick in select theaters, VOD platforms, and Digital HD on August 25, 2017.