SOVEREIGN - Mark Reviews Movies

Sovereign, Briarcliff Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 10, 2025

Writer/director Christian Swegal looks at both sides of the divide between liberty, represented by a father and son in the so-called "sovereign citizen" movement, and order, portrayed by a father and son in law enforcement. The filmmaker finds each side wanting in Sovereign for surprisingly similar reasons.

This is an inherently political film, to be sure, but by its tragic finale, what comes through the strongest is the human side of the story. It is ultimately the tale of a pair of stubborn, determined fathers who have taught their sons only to see life, the world, and themselves in a very specific way. There is no room for any different opinion or viewpoint or ideology in these family environments, so when these two outlooks inevitably clash, it can only end one way.

Violence is also at the core of these philosophies. It gradually reveals itself in the views of Jerry Kane (Nick Offerman), a sovereign citizen who makes his living traveling—the only word of which he would approve to describe his actions, by the way—the country to offer lectures about his opposition to anything related to the government.

He doesn't have a driver's license, for example, because he considers his car and his driving to be a private matter, outside the realm of commerce and, hence, beyond the regulation of the government. Jerry goes so far, in fact, that he somehow considers the name on his birth certificate to exist as an entity other than his physical form. When he appears in court on a matter relating to the imminent foreclosure of his house, he tells the judge that he is only present as a representative of the name referenced in any legal document. It does not, obviously, go well for him.

Swegal presents and Offerman plays Jerry as—what can be best be described, perhaps—a righteous fool. The philosophy of his perspective is understandable and, within the context of a country that was founded in part on liberty, sympathetic. That means we can see some sound foundation to Jerry's politics, but the filmmaker also makes it perfectly and sometimes painfully clear that this man has very little legal or even logical foundation to how rationalizes and argues his philosophical leanings.

He often contradicts himself, seems to be pulling rationales out of nowhere, and comes across as a petty, childish man whenever something doesn't go his way. Beyond the fact that Jerry seems to have some mental health issues, the beginning and ending of his worldview feels as if it's based on the man wanting things to go exactly his way and having a tantrum whenever they don't.

The bulk of this story focuses on Jerry and his teenage son Joe (Jacob Tremblay), who spends his time at home alone, since his father is often gone on his business and the boy is homeschooled. He wants to socialize but essentially can't, because his world is entirely caught up in his father and the man's principles. Once the local Sheriff and a representative of the local bank give the two official notice that they'll be evicted in a month, Jerry starts bringing Joe along to his lectures to help, and the father's rhetoric begins to include indirect threats of and calls to violence toward any government official who might try to take his life, property, or freedom.

The other side of what eventually becomes a direct conflict is John Bouchart (Dennis Quaid), a local police chief who encounters Jerry and Joe after a routine traffic stop escalates, putting Jerry in jail and Joe into a social services facility. At first, this subplot, as John takes his police-officer-in-training son Adam (Thomas Mann) to various exercises, seems extraneous. In subtle ways, however, Swegal is developing the fundamental divide between these two sides and raising the bigger questions between the lines of the plot.

Adam's training, for example, is focused entirely on how to use various forms of violence to guarantee compliance—from physical holds that cause pain, to the use of stun guns, to the drawing and using firearms. If all of this is the proper and primary procedure for the enforcement of laws, how does someone in John or Adam's position handle someone like Jerry, who is dogged in his beliefs and has no intention of complying with a rule of law that he believes to be intrinsically illegitimate? When each of two sides of a philosophical conflict train themselves for and convince themselves of the necessity of violence in a confrontation, there is only one way for it to end.

On its face, this plot plays as a thriller, because we witness each side escalating and cementing their beliefs and tactics in violence. Just beneath that, though, the story unfolds as a tragedy in the making, because the fathers' stubbornness may appear to be unflappable but it doesn't need to be that way for the sons, who show some signs of independence from those parents (Joe wants to attend public school, and Adam is reluctant to take John's advice about how to handle his crying newborn). When it comes down to it, however, the desire or need to live up to a father's expectations and example is as inescapable as any fact of family.

The failure and tragedy within the story of Sovereign, then, isn't necessarily one of a shaky political philosophy that leads to violence, a view of law enforcement as the enacting of various forms of violence, or even the inevitability of a conflict between these two parties. Those can be discussed, debated, and negotiated. No, the heartbreaking and sobering key to Swegal's film is that it's about the responsibilities of parenting and how a person's shortcomings in that often reveal themselves when it's far too late.

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