Americana is a 2025 crime thriller film written in the shape of Western epics, with a set of colorful and varying characters, ranging from the cruel capitalist to the less sharp but kind-hearted good soul, and a plot full of bizarre twists and turns. The film is centered around a set of individuals in a small rural town in South Dakota, whose lives are tremendously affected when a Lakota tribe ghost shirt surfaces on the black market, and a local collector is ready to do anything to add it to his private collection. Overall, Americana makes for an entertaining and intriguing watch, although it does not succeed in keeping up with the smart and convoluted premise that it initially sets.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
Americana begins with a young boy, Calvin Starr, walking a long way from his home as if on an important and religiously sacred journey towards attaining an object of power. He reaches a convenience store and trades in a few crumpled dollar bills and a couple of coins for a Native American ceremonial headband, which is nothing short of a sacred treasure to him. A young boy living with his elder sister at the house of the latter’s toxic boyfriend, Cal has all day to himself, and he has found solace and company in the Western films and novels of the past, which have made him tremendously interested in Native culture and their way of life. In fact, Cal is so obsessed with Native culture that he wholeheartedly believes that he too is a member of the community, despite being just a white boy with no Native blood in him at all. Yet, Cal keeps claiming that he is the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, the great leader of the Lakota tribe, who originally owned the lands in the region.
Cal’s elder sister, Mandy, is too caught up with her own life to bother about what he is up to. Mandy has to tolerate the toxic and obsessive nature of her boyfriend, Dillon, who is a proud conservative and a typical redneck, believing that no woman should step out of her house unless absolutely necessary. But on one seemingly normal morning, right at the beginning of the film, Mandy is seen running out of her house and getting into Dillon’s car, as she hurriedly asks the boy to get all his stuff and enter the car as well. It is gradually revealed that Mandy ended up killing Dillon by bashing his head in with a hammer, and so she now plans to flee the state and drive back to her father’s house before she lands herself in legal trouble.
Despite all her best efforts, Mandy is unable to take Cal with her, as the boy keeps stating that his people, meaning the Lakota people, who had been wiped out by the settlers in the past, still need him. Thus, she leaves the boy behind and drives away, while Dillon soon stumbles out of the doorway, confirming that he had not yet died from the blow on his head. It is now young Cal, who had been practicing archery, just like Native Americans, for months, who shoots Dillon dead and wanders away from the house, as we are left with a twisty premise. Through a disjointed narrative, Americana then presents the incidents that led up to this bloody falling out and the events that follow.
What Is The Lakota Ghost Shirt?
As Americana takes us back a few days before the events from the opening chapter (the film has five separate chapters), the reason behind Mandy attacking her boyfriend is made clear. It all starts with the fact that Dillon MacIntosh actually works as a goon-for-hire, who can be appointed by anyone for any odd job that requires the use of a gun. One day, Dillon and his partner-in-crime, Fun Dave, attend a meeting at the local diner with a man named Roy Lee Dean. Roy is a collector of Western antiquities who has put his private collection on public display as a sort of museum, and so he desperately wants to get hold of a particular item that has recently surfaced on the black market in South Dakota. The item in question is a Lakota Ghost shirt, which is currently owned by a pretentious art collector in town called Pendleton Duvall, and Roy wants to get the shirt for himself, by any means necessary.
The item that works as the plot device in Americana is a ‘ghost shirt,’ which is an integral part of Native American culture. After the settlers started killing Natives and occupying their lands, the latter came up with the Ghost Dance religion, centered around dance rituals that were believed to reunite the dead with the living. An integral part of these dance rituals were ghost shirts, which were clothing items, mostly shirts, worn during the ritual to welcome the spirits of the fallen back to the mortal realm. These shirts were believed to carry extreme spiritual and symbolic power, and the same were then worn by the Native fighters to battle. They believed that the Ghost shirts would protect them from the bullets of the settlers and help them win the wars to protect their lands and people.
In the film, Pendleton Duvall talks about how the Native Americans started to believe that Jesus Christ himself would return to Earth to protect them against the settlers, and that the Ghost shirts were gifted to the tribes by God. Although Duvall is a morally corrupt art collector whose only intention in life is to prove his intellectual superiority over his guests and take unfair advantage of his situation to get intimate with his female guests, there might be some truth to his claims. What Duvall talks about seems to be connected with the theory, or the belief, that the Natives probably came up with the concept of ghost shirts protecting them from all evil after being inspired by the Mormon religion’s temple garment, which is believed to serve the same purpose, although in a spiritual sense and not a literal one.
At present, Dillon and Fun Dave agree to work for Roy Lee Dean, who wants the particular Lakota Ghost shirt stolen from Duvall’s house, in exchange for a fee of 10,000 dollars. As planned, Dillon and Fun Dave break into Duvall’s house, kill the man and all his guests, and steal the Lakota Ghost shirt from the display case it had been put in. But the problem that arises is that, before dying, Duvall laughs at the paltry amount Dillon was being paid by Roy and suggests that the artifact is actually worth far more.
This information makes Dillon kill his partner, Fun Dave, so that he does not have to share the amount he would receive from the job, and also, more importantly, so that the comparatively timid Fun Dave does not cause any hitches in his plan. After realizing that the shirt is worth thousands of dollars, Dillon decides to flee the state without handing it over to Roy, and try and sell it by himself so that he can pocket all the profit. It becomes obvious that Dillon had always been on the lookout for a situation like this, in which he would be able to make off with a large amount of money and turn his life around completely. Thus, he neatly keeps the Lakota Ghost shirt inside the trunk of his car and drives back home, hoping to flee with his girlfriend, Mandy.
What had happened in Mandy’s past?
Unfortunately for Dillon, his girlfriend, Mandy, had the same plan in mind, waiting for months for a sudden situation that would make her instantly rich so that she could skip town and start life afresh. She knew that such an opportunity could quickly come her way, considering the criminal life of her boyfriend, and Dillon was always expendable to her. Mandy had clearly been putting up with him solely hoping for this chance, and therefore when Dillon finally calls her up to pack her bags and be ready to leave, for he has bagged an artifact that can bring him thousands of dollars, she prepares to execute her own plan. With cold and calculative moves, Mandy gets hold of a hammer from the kitchen and lies on her bed, awaiting the perfect moment to strike her boyfriend and leave with his money, his car, and most importantly, the prized artifact that he talked about.
Mandy’s affinity towards violence and her ability to execute such a bloody plan so calmly are directly linked to her past, as becomes evident later on in the film. Mandy actually comes from a house that serves as the headquarters of a dangerous cult run by her evil patriarch father, Hiram. Just like any other radical patriarch with conservative values, Hiram believes that women are inferior to men in every possible way, and that they should solely be used as tools for the physical, social, and financial purpose of men. Therefore, he has established an extremely messed-up system at his house, where his wife and multiple daughters are forcefully made to sleep with men, either for money or social influence. When we are taken inside the house in the later half of the film, one of the daughters is made to get intimate with the local sheriff so that he does not take any legal action against the gun-toting criminal cult.
From her childhood, Mandy had been subjected to such a cruel and torturous life in her past, and in fact Calvin, who she introduces to everyone as her younger brother, happens to be her son. Calvin had been conceived by Mandy after one instance of forceful sex accommodated by her father, and it was around this time that she had decided to put all her efforts into leaving the vile household. Thus, she had managed to escape with the help of her resourceful nature and had then moved from state to state, living life on her own terms. But the current situation she finds herself in, where she has killed Dillon, and Roy Lee Dean wants to get hold of the Ghost shirt that she has run off with, makes Mandy return to her father’s house in search of protection, or at least a few days’ respite.
Who gets to keep the Lakota Ghost shirt?
By the time Mandy reaches her father’s house in Wyoming with the Lakota Ghost shirt, Roy Lee Dean is already in pursuit, as he wants to get hold of the artifact so that he can go on to sell it on the black market for a high price. Two other parties also get involved, beginning with the unassuming waitress at the diner, Penny Jo Poplin, and her new romantic interest, military veteran Lefty Ledbetter. Penny had first figured out that a secretive meeting was about to take place at the diner when Fun Dave had carelessly left a note at the place, and she had informed Lefty about this development. On the day of the meeting between Dillon and Roy, both Penny and Lefty had overheard their conversation, figured out that a Native American artifact, worth at least 500,000 dollars, was at stake, and had started to follow the orange car of Dillon, unaware that it was now Mandy driving it.
On the other side, young Cal Starr had been spotted by a member of a Native American gangster group and taken to their headquarters to meet with their leader, Ghost Eye. Although Cal was not at all pleased at the men having been influenced by other cultures and listening to rap music, for he still believed himself to be the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, he eventually told them about the Lakota Ghost shirt that he had earlier seen in the trunk of Dillon’s car. Despite the gangsters having lost touch with their culture, they immediately decided to try and retrieve this important artifact, out of respect for their Lakota heritage, and also probably to make some money off it. Thus, they technically abduct Cal, make him lead them to Mandy, and finally reach Hiram’s house to get hold of the ceremonial shirt.
Penny and Lefty try and fail to hold Mandy at gunpoint and rob the shirt off her at a gas station before she can reach her father’s house, and so when Lefty later gets caught by one of the cult’s guards and brought to the porch, Mandy identifies him and tells Hiram what had happened. Without any hesitation, Hiram shoots Lefty before he himself is shot by an arrow fired by the Native gangsters. An intense battle breaks out next, following which only the female members of Hiram’s house are left alive. Mandy calls up Roy and tells him to come and get his artifact, on the condition that he wipe out the remaining gangsters around the house. In the extensive battle that follows, almost every party dies or is severely injured.
The money that Roy had brought with him, a total of 150,000 dollars, gets picked up by Penny, who flees the scene with it. She ends up giving one bag, containing 50,000 dollars, to Mandy’s mother and sisters to buy their support and leave the place without any problem, meaning that she gets to get away with 100,000 dollars. The Lakota Ghost shirt, meanwhile, is nabbed by Cal, who had managed to survive the whole ordeal unscathed. Roy Lee Dean and his associate also die in the fight, meaning that there is nobody left alive to challenge Cal anymore.
Do Penny and Lefty end up together?
Penny and Lefty unfortunately do not have the happy ending that they probably deserved, entirely because of their greed to steal the Ghost shirt and get rich by selling it. Lefty had gotten shot by Hiram earlier, and he had seemed to have died on the spot, although this was not the case. He had managed to survive despite his grave injuries, and he even ultimately managed to get into the car and run over one of Penny’s attackers, saving her in the process. While Lefty hadn’t openly expressed his interest in Penny earlier, he now finally tries to propose to her, repeating almost the entire speech that he tried on every woman that he met, and the one that Penny had heard numerous times before as part of Lefty’s rehearsals before every proposal.
Although Penny accepts the proposal, there is no way for the couple to be together, as Lefty dies inside the car, and his body is left by the side of the road, with beer cans placed beside it by Penny as a final gesture of respect. Heartbroken by this loss but encouraged by the possibilities of her new life, Penny drives her car towards Nashville, where she will try to become a professional singer with the help of the 100,000 dollars.
Does Mandy stay back with her mother and sisters?
During the battle with the Native American gang, Mandy encourages her mother and sisters to take up arms and fight for themselves, which is strictly against the laws set in place by her father. Although Hiram is already dead by this time, the rest of the vile men in his cult try to stop the women but are all ultimately killed by them.
In Americana’s ending, the Starr house is totally run by the women, who were once dominated and tortured by the men of the family. Their first course of action is to take Mandy to the hospital to help her survive the wounds inflicted upon her. However, Mandy soon chooses to flee from the hospital, as she is unable to stay back with her mother and sisters, either out of a feeling of guilt for not having helped them earlier, or because of a feeling of contempt against them for never speaking up against the injustices of Hiram. In the end, Mandy chooses to remain independent, with the ties with her family severed. On the other hand, the wealth that Hiram leaves behind, along with the 50,000 dollars that Penny gives them, would be enough for the women to live out the rest of their lives.
Is Cal now a part of the Native American group?
Cal chooses to part ways with Penny at the headquarters of the Native American gang so that he can return their Ghost shirt and finally be initiated into the group. Ghost Eye survives the ordeal and manages to return to the building, and he even takes the shirt from the boy, thanking him for his service. However, Cal is not allowed to be a part of the Native American gang, as the boy never really belonged to the culture, and it would be a terrible misappropriation if his fantasy were supported any further. Therefore, Cal has to wander the streets for the whole night before he is finally spotted by his mother, Mandy. His experiences now make Cal understand his real identity, and he is ready to reunite with his mother, giving Americana a happy ending, at least in this regard.
