'Little Dixie' (2023) Movie Review: Classic Hero Re-invented in Neon Colors

Little Dixie is a thriller movie directed by John Swab starring Frank Grillo. With Eric Dane and Annabeth Gish.

Frank Grillo impersonates a man that navigates between two seas and between borders, a classic anti-hero who due to the circumstances has to become a hero to save his daughter, Little Dixie, whom the movie is named after.

This is a movie of black and white contrasts with grey areas in which everything happens in dark tones with even darker characters. This film which has its source in the construction of classic cinema to, in a authentic and brutal style, destroy and separate itself from its genre.

In this film, the director, John Swab knows how to impose his own style.

Review of Little Dixie

Beau Knapp little dixie — Beau Knapp in Little Dixie (2023)

This is a story for an adult audience that does not want to or know how to be able to please a majority or even feel like doing that. If you are expecting a good hero with a big heart, don´t watch this movie, Little Dixie, which reminds us (because of the plot), of a movie with Liam Neeson… this movie is nothing like that other one. Here the hero is going to reach beyond everything in order to save his daughter, and when you see the film, you will know why we say this.

Frank Grillo, an actor we love and esteem who knows how to bring to action films, Eighties thrillers which are occasionally forgoten, a new meaning, sometimes comical and sometimes (in this instance) in more serious films. He knows how to do this and knows how to act in his own style. Fills the role.

However this movie has the John Swab imprimatur. We were able to talk to him and learn a little more: the unmistakeable “brutal” touch and his personal director style “for a minority”, which can be seen in each shot. If you saw Candy Land, you will know what I am talking about: stories that don´t leave the viewer indiferent, with violent contents, iconoclastic and furious… Little Dixie is also like twhis, but it is a more classic movie if you like, with more of a script and which is apparently in a style, escapes from clichés constantly, from the “bad guy” in the cabaret to the last scenes, almost poetical, in the swimming pool.

eric dane little dixie — Eric Dane in Little Dixie (2023)

This is a movie with a brand, identity and above all, great force.

Perfect? No attempt is made in this sense nor is there a presumption of perfection, this is a “I do as I please” movie but if you watch it, you will see it is memorable. This is cinema with irony about the construction of a film, well made and with great photography, it is also “likeable” in a story that will (surely not) leave the viewer indifferent.

Warning: This movie is not for all audiences nor does it mean to be. The contents include violent scenes.

Our Opinion

This is a movie with certain value, with a personality that will not appeal to everyone, but it has the inmense valor of knowing that for once, it likes itself and is found within a genre it transcends.