When Americana landed in theaters, it went out with barely a whisper. Despite a buzzy cast and a flashy neo-Western hook, the film became Sydney Sweeney’s biggest box office bomb, disappearing almost as quickly as it arrived. Now, it’s quietly getting a second shot at life on Starz — and suddenly, people are actually watching it. And once you strip away the theatrical expectations and the “is this a hit?” discourse, Americana plays very differently.
Sweeney plays Penny Jo Poplin, a soft-spoken waitress who dreams of becoming a singer, and her storyline quietly becomes one of the film’s emotional cores. In theaters, it was easy for this to get lost amid the chaos of the film’s many moving parts. On streaming, it finally gets room to breathe. The movie also stars Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Eric Dane, Simon Rex, Zahn McClarnon, Gavin Maddox Bergman, and Toby Huss.
Is ‘Americana’ Worth Watching?
Collider’s review of the movie stated that Americana is an ambitious, emotionally driven neo-Western that uses crime and genre trappings to explore loneliness, longing, and the need for something more. While Tony Tost’s episodic structure and Quentin Tarantino-inspired storytelling give the film a bold shape, its themes around Native American identity and violence sometimes feel underdeveloped or muddled. Still, the cast carries it, with Paul Walter Hauser and Sydney Sweeney bringing warmth and vulnerability. Halsey stands out as the film’s emotional anchor, grounding the story in quiet resilience. Despite messy ideas and uneven execution, the movie’s empathy and heart make it a compelling, if flawed, modern Western.
“Hauser as Lefty is quite lovely in Americana, and his dynamic with Sweeney’s Penny Jo Poplin is especially delightful. Tost shows us these two on their own and how frustratingly lonely their lives can be, but then they light up when they’re together, as if they’re finally free to be open and themselves with someone for the first time in a while. There’s a big-hearted nature to Hauser that fits this character nicely, and Sweeney presents Penny as a quiet type daring to finally come out of her shell, which results in a solid performance — even if the choice to make the character a stutterer is a step too far that doesn’t quite work.”
Americana is streaming now on STARZ.
