Red Rocket

Sean Baker is quickly rising to the top of my favourite directors list. His movies are so quiet and unassuming, yet they linger in my mind for days and days.

He tells stories about real people living in real America that resonate against fluffy films with forced morals and shiny stars who live in perfect houses.

Red Rocket tells the truth of a seedy character who is both charismatic (to those who are naive enough and needy enough to buy into him) and repugnant in his self-serving narcissism.

Not much happens in this film but I was not bored for a second of it. The characters are so well played and well conceived it is riveting.

Bravo Mr. Baker! Please keep making brilliant movies.

6/10 - Simon Rex proves that he is certainly an actor capable of drama films and someone to take seriously, but as the credits abruptly began to roll, I could not help but ponder what the meaning of the film was and why I spent over 2 hours investing in it.

In an industry that loves to tell stories of how America used to be or how it wants to see itself currently, Baker bravely holds up the mirror of reality to a denial driven medium. He can do this without reproach because the sincerity and truthfulness of his characters resonate so deeply as to make them unassailable. In each of his films we see characters shoved to the margins of the masses, but as his body of work grows we realize these people are not so ancillary but instead, quilted together, make up the mosaic of our true identity.

His latest subject is Mikey Saber, played exquisitely by Simon Rex, a former porn star returned to his long forgotten small town of Texas City. Mikey is affable enough but also shamelessly self-serving and utterly incapable of feeling any personal responsibility. We learn in the first 10 minutes of the film that our "hero" is in fact our villain, but we are given no respite from following him through his deceits for the entirety of the runtime. There are no moments of saving grace or deeper understanding of his character. Because he never aims to understand himself. He lies and embellishes his accomplishments, yet there is a weird earnestness to the proceedings. He is narcissistic but not intentionally malicious. There seem to be no ends to his means outside of self-preservation and a padding of his irreparably broken ego. His lies he tells, how quickly he is to interject his modest celebrity, and his propensity for deflecting all blame, all serve only his own fragility.

It's a singular character study and this is all without mentioning a single other character, several of which could carry their own film. Most notable is the nearly 18 year old girl, Strawberry, who is the aim of the nearly 50 year old, Mikey's, affection. She represents that awkward cross-section many young women exist in between maturity and naiveté. She is smarter, brighter, deeper, and certainly better than Mikey and, yet, considerably less wise. You unfortunately can't fake wisdom, you simply have to earn it. She falls prey to his promises and will likely be the next victim of his uncalculated chaos.

The movie has so much insight to offer while also being outlandishly funny. All of this has not even scratched the surface of the psychology of this movie. From the subtle but very intentional political commentary, to the examination of what "physical endowments" can have on the masculine psyche and confidence, this movie is deceptively weighty, while also being a trashy good time.

Red Rocket continues Sean Baker's streak of deeply empathetic cinema, but instead of using his lens to capture the inner lives of the downtrodden and vulnerable, as he's done in his previous films, we are instead let into the mind of a con man and serial abuser.

Mikey Saber starts out like many a Sean Baker protagonist- likable and magnetic if a little rough around the edges. But where we would usually find over the course of the film that this magnetism is masking a deep sadness or complexity, we instead come to learn that Mikey Saber's charm masks something much more insidious. We, the audience, can only watch in horror as he drags a naive teenager into his schemes and leaves behind a slew of ruined lives in his wake. It's a challenging and often frustrating film, but like its wily protagonist, it was able to charm me and win me over, purely by the virtue of its chutzpah.

*Watched at Cannes 2021*

American indie-darling Sean Baker has always worked on the ground level when making his films. He often casts non-professional actors and plants his audience in the ironically unglamorous parts of America, such as the dingy Magic Castle motel located next to Walt Disney World. Baker's budgets are small, with "The Florida Project'' carrying a total cost of $2,000,000, which is roughly the amount spent to have Arnold Schwarzenegger speak one hundred words in "T2: Judgement Day." Now in 2021, Baker is back to shine a light on lower-America with "Red Rocket'', which debuted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Opening with the catchy rhythms of NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye", former pornstar Mikey Saber has returned to the deadbeat town of Texas City. Mikey had been at the top of the porn scene for several years but eventually found his way out the door with some questionable career moves. With nowhere else to go, he begs and pleads his way into crashing with his former pornstar ex-wife Lexi, who, like him, was a shining star that has fallen back to the ground and lives with her poverty-stricken mother in the middle of nowhere.

Mikey is a guy who always has a plan, but never a way to execute it. He does have a plan to get back to Los Angeles and revitalize his career, but it requires him to reconnect with some characters from his past who hate his guts.

Both literally and metaphorically, "Red Rocket" is a ballsy movie. Baker has always found a fascination with the seedier side of America, which is the side that is often unauthentically portrayed in Hollywood (I'm looking at you "Hillbilly Elegy"). His characters are often complicated and morally ambiguous, such as Halley from "The Florida Project". But Baker doesn't wallow in their pain and use it as a ploy for sympathy (again, looking at you "Hillbilly Elegy"). Instead, he wants us to understand their desperation and see how so many people in this situation can rationalize their actions.

"Red Rocket" doesn't break from that developmental mold when it comes to his supporting characters. In Mikey's journey back to the top, he rekindles with a weed queen that sees her business as a safety net for her family. Lexi and her mother are both addicted to opiates due to her mother's medical condition and the distracting peace that the drugs bring from the painful world.

With these characters on the brink of society, Baker uses their situation to subtly explain the unforeseen popularity of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election. Characters are often seen slumped at home in their couches with the television set to Fox News and its neverending coverage of the Republican candidate and his "mass appeal". Baker's illustration about the allure of Trump doesn't try to be a grand statement for America itself, which turns out to be a good thing as the message comes together cleaner than the hamfisted ones found in mainstream media.

But while Baker respects his supporting cast, his relationship with Mikey is more complicated. Mikey is the cinematic combination of Dirk Diggler and Howard Ratner. He's a person that you love that you hate and hate that you love. You find yourself intrinsically drawn to him because of his drive and charm. But as the film progresses and Mikey's grand plan comes closer into view, your attitude towards him starts to waver.

Much of that emotional response comes from Simon Rex's brilliant performance, whose most prominent role up until now has been a recurring supporting part in the "Scary Movie" franchise and some pornographic solo scenes in a series of straight-to-video gay porn releases. Almost as if he has lived the life of Mikey throughout stretches of his career, Rex seems to instinctively know how to play this type of sleazy charmer.

While it does contain perfect casting, "Red Rocket" is not a perfect movie as a whole. With a runtime of 124 minutes, the film contains enough material for a tighter 90-minute story. The middle hour is the victim of this bloatedness, with long stretches given for light material. Still, the overly fatty meat on this movie's bones does give Rex and the cast more than enough to chew on, resulting in an emotional rollercoaster that couldn't be replicated by bigger productions.

Slotting in nicely with Baker's filmography and that of distributor A24, "Red Rocket" is one hell of a ride from beginning to end. There may be some potholes along the way, but they're not enough to stop this film from reaching its satisfying destination.