Directed By Sean Baker

Starring – Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss

The Plot – Finding himself down and out in Los Angeles, ex porn star Mikey Saber (Rex) decides to crawl back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, where his estranged wife (Elrod) and mother-in-law (Deiss) are living. Just as this dysfunctional family seems to be making things work, Mikey meets a young woman named Strawberry (Suzanna Son) working the cash register at a local doughnut shop. He falls right back into his old habits.

Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and pervasive language

Red Rocket | Official Trailer HD | A24 – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Baker’s delight. Sean Baker is one of the most vastly underrated directors working today, combining a signature style and refreshing tonal consistency that endears audiences by the dozen to indulge in these lower-class fantasies of mesmerizing proportions. The visual familiarity certainly persists in a collection of distinctive traits ranging anywhere from wide angle steering, to picture perfect framing, that Baker made a stylish siesta out of during “The Florida Project” and “Tangerine”, but in particular, the luminating textures and vibrancy of the coordinated color schemes painting a false sense of security for the audience, are most indulgent, especially with the backdrop of various businesses and housing designs playing such an influential role in the their various interactions throughout the storytelling. Speaking of which, Baker’s storytelling is equally invigorating, capturing the resiliency of a redemption story for Mikey, who is anything but admirable, yet all the more endearing for the light-hearted emphasis surrounding the movie’s tone that help enhance and extract the humor from some truly vulnerable instances of self-humility.

– Meaningful setting. While Baker does trade in the golden effervescence of the Florida keys from his previous two accomplishments, the channeling of sunbaked Texas countryside weigh more than an influential hand in outlining just what about this hometown Mikey feels so ashamed to crawl home towards. The film takes place during the summer of 2016, at the rise of the Donald Trump evolution, so with this and the setting in mind, it’s easy to outline a conservative idealism to approaches and character motivations that don’t take too kindly to pornography or a porn star returning home to start all over again. It stirs forth moments of suffocating tension between character interactions, but also vividly paints a country on the edge of tensions, as a result of the most divisively complicated election in the history of the country, making the elements of an environment for Mikey’s despair feel like ingredients towards a ticking time bomb that could blow at any given moment.

– Inescapable soundtrack. Once again, Baker is not above paying a little extra for the licensing rights of pop culture favorites and familiarity to instill a demeanor that plays coherently towards the consistency of his tonal range. However, his use here of N-Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye”, with four plays across a two-hour film, takes matters to a whole new level, but ironically one that feels synonymously within the beats of the narrative. Beyond just a topical sense, where the lyrics echo what’s transpiring on screen, the instrumentals of the tracks also play into the energy and excitement of the tonal context, like the ambition of a fresh start during the movie’s introduction, or the playing in reverse of the track during the film’s closing sequence, which brings matters back to where we all began. This song isn’t likely to evade your memory after seeing this film, so if you don’t enjoy it, be forewarned. For those of us who do, bask in the sounds of a young Justin Timberlake moaning through the clarity to walk away from a relationship that did him wrong, similar to Mikey in the instance of the film.

– Perfect casting. Aside from Rex, who I will get to in a second, the decision to fill the collective ensemble once again with near first-time actors, helped maintain a consistency for authenticity that kept the focused untouched from the beats of the narrative, allowing each of them to stand out in naturalistic ways that brought a palpable nuance to their respective characters. As for Simon Rex, this is very much a redemption story that mirrors that of his on-screen character in more ways than one. Considering Rex himself was a momentary porn star in real life, his casting feels more than a bit convenient here, especially during scenes where his knowledge of the craft provides more than a rich believability of what’s asked of him. As for his portrayal, Rex was simply born to play this role, articulating Mikey with a combination of dumb-founded gentleness and swagger in confidence that outlines the juxtaposition of his often-spontaneous character, and gives us what is undoubtedly the role of a lifetime for Rex, which I hope at the very least earn him some Oscar consideration.

– Comic accuracy. For my money, there hasn’t been a film in 2021 with the kind of expressive fire power in material as that of “Red Rocket”, which feels like a throwback to some of my favorite 90’s coming of age films of the same brand, but without the raunchiness from those juvenile installments. Instead, Baker crafts several timely self-deprecating gags that not only prove that he isn’t afraid to humiliate any of his characters, but also in the improvisation of his genius as a screenwriter to instill unpredictable moments of influence that redefine matters in a way that was twice as crazy as previously established. Aside from this brand of humor speaking volumes towards me in the way it attaches itself towards my heart and gut, it relies far more heavily on a sell from the actors distributing them, rather than a series of outlined punchlines. This certainly plays into the dynamic of the talented ensemble that was previously praised, but also feels commendable from the trust that Baker has in the talents of such pivotal pieces, solidifying a cohesive effort that proves the effectiveness when all hands are on board to create something intellectually pungent in the boundaries of its material.

– Responsible take. As to where I felt a film like “Licorice Pizza” was better than “Red Rocket”, I can at least commend the latter for the honesty in portrayals that it took, with regards to some unacceptable situations. The most obvious being the inappropriate romance between Mikey and Strawberry, which is depicted as anything other than ideal, complete with lies and allusions between them, in depicting them as something they truthfully aren’t. Because Mikey himself is a dirt-bag who is morally bankrupt in the duration of the film, the script never endorses his actions in the way they telegraph empathy from the minds of the people watching from beyond, instead articulating his lack of growth from the character study as something that is purely financial, and never something that morally transforms him before our very eyes. He’s very much the same character at the end of the movie, as he was in the beginning, treading through an all but desirable situation as he finds his way back to the top of a profession that embraces his sleaziness.

– Meticulous exposition. Some of my favorite lines of crafted dialogue are delivered as a means of outlining a history of lived-in emphasis between these characters, which in turn solidifies the reasons for tensions between them. This is certainly nothing new with regards to independent cinema, but its usage here revels in a cleverness that doesn’t always give the answer to the question in the same scene which it was asked, instead ingraining it into the spontaneity of the conversations that spread like wildfire, without any indication of their transitioning. It forces the audience to remain invested to scenes that would probably otherwise be left out of other movies all together, and values them with a touch of importance that helps feed into the motivations that aren’t as spoon-fed as mainstream audiences would prefer them to be.

NEGATIVES

– Too long. Even with the abundance of story and dynamics permeating before our very eyes, I do wish the film could’ve shaved around twenty minutes from its final run time, especially as the editing grows all the more taxing, the longer the film persists. Certain scenes continue in a way that completely removes the air of momentum from their consistency, while others lack a sense of clarity in the way they’re cut that momentarily disorients audiences, until the following scene is able to rescue them from the clutches of incoherence. It was right around the beginning of the third act, where I started to feel the weight in distance of the journey itself, which could itself be an aspect of the lightning quick first half that maintained urgency in the heat of the narrative. The ending itself is satisfying enough, for the final shot that echoes history repeating itself, but sluggish pacing leading up to matters led to more than a couple moments when I checked my watch, and ultimately leaving “Red Rocket” feeling like it requires one more cut on the editing room floor to solidify perfection.

– Contradicting intentions. In Baker’s construction of these characters being as low and degrading as anyone ever put to mainstream cinema, he forgets about the ever-growing problem with character investment that could prove condemning for certain audiences. As to where “The Florida Project” provided a similar outline with its characters, they did have Willem Dafoe’s Bobby or victimized child protagonists whom you could at least feel sorry for, for being a spoke in their own endangering. “Red Rocket” has nothing like that, instead participating in a game of ‘Can you top this’ that would make Rob Zombie jealous, with characters who rarely if ever learn a parting lesson for their own irresponsibility. Even as charming as Rex is in the lead protagonist role, he never reached a level of personal investment with me that made me fear for the unforeseen odds that were continuously adding up against him, but never producing any semblance of stakes for the spontaneous outbursts of conflict that Baker underlines each scene with.

My Grade: 8/10 or B+