Featureless highways and flat grasslands and flame-belching oil refineries are unveiled if something heroic might happen there, which makes the spectacle of Mikey screwing up and doubling down funnier. The wide-and-narrow frame creates a mock-epic feeling. Still, the opening and closing sections of "Red Rocket" are such perfectly tuned black-comedy contraptions that watching them unreel is as much of a vertigo-inducing experience as the rollercoaster ride that Mikey and Strawberry take at an amusement park.Īnd, despite its missteps, this is Baker's best-directed film, judged purely in terms of how economically he sets up and pays off each mile marker in the story, often getting in and out of a scene with two or three elegantly choreographed but unpretentious shots. The answer to the question "What will the next layer reveal?" is always the same: more slime. Like other works in this vein, such as " Mississippi Grind" and " Roger Dodger" and the Safdie brothers' scripted output, "Red Rocket" peels a rancid onion. a Mikey in the making-or if she only pretends to be one because it excites Mikey and makes her feel bold and worldly.īaker and Rex instantly establish Mikey as one of those grifters who presents himself as a sweet overgrown boy with a prodigious tool and an ice-cream face but will ruin your life and not look back. (In one of the script's only bluntly allegorical touches, the action is set during the presidential campaign of 2016 the voice of Donald Trump, the Mikey Saber of both business and politics, is heard throughout.) But pretty soon we figure out that the script doesn't have a lot to add to that first impression. And there are moments in the sexually graphic "Red Rocket" where, if the filmmakers aren't exactly endorsing their protagonist's middle-aged, borderline pedo-pimp obsession with Strawberry, they're not being as rigorous about mediating it as they should. It's also not clear from the writing of Strawberry if we're supposed to read her as a sexually precocious and manipulative waif- fatale-i.e. The midsection of this rambling 130-minute film, wherein Mikey ensnares a freckle-faced 17-year-old donut shop employee named Strawberry ( Suzanna Son) and schemes to take her to LA and turn her into a porn star, is one-note and repetitious. "Why would I lie to my mother?" Lexi says.)īut it's also, in certain ways, the least of the list. ("Your mother's starting shit with me, can you please inform her that I'm not a dick?" Mikey hollers at Lexi. "Red Rocket" is the latest entry. It's often laugh-out loud funny, thanks to Mikey's shamelessness and others' reactions to it. Everything about him is a lie, from his supposed fame (he says his videos have an "81% click-through rate") to his erections (courtesy of boner pills). He keeps making a mess of things and then fleeing the disaster site, helping himself to any money, pot, sex, transportation, or lodging that cross his path.Īt this point in their careers, the filmmaking team of director Sean Baker and his regular co-writer Chris Bergoch have built an impressive library of realistic movies about the rainbow coalition of the American underclass. Nakedly opportunistic, he clothes himself in others' trust. As "Red Rocket" unfolds, we understand that this is Mikey's default state. Mikey is a person who could tell you that he showed up unannounced in a loved one's life with nothing but the clothes on his back and be speaking literally rather than metaphorically. He starts planning for a future that will take him back to Los Angeles to reclaim his lost glory. Pretty soon he's riding her borrowed bicycle to job interviews and, after bombing all of them, wrangling a gig as a dealer with a weed business run by coolheaded Leondria (Judy Hill) and her enforcer June (Brittney Rodriguez). Soon things are looking up for Mikey. Lexi refuses him entry, but Mikey keeps chipping away at her sympathies in hopes of getting inside long enough to take a shower and borrow whatever clothes Lexi has that could pass for gender-neutral. Mikey shows up at a bungalow near a refinery where his estranged wife and former porn partner Lexi ( Bree Elrod) lives with her aged mama ( Brenda Deiss).
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