'Red Rocket' is a brilliant reckoning with American self-interest
A24
What “Red Rocket” accomplishes is astonishing: It’s a lively, funny, likable movie that also serves as an unsettling metaphor for the selfish intentions of people who take no accountability and create destruction for those who engage with their tornado.
BTW: It takes place in 2016, shortly before the presidential election.
Directed and co-written by Sean Baker (“Starlet,” “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project”) and starring Simon Rex (!), “Red Rocket” continues the filmmaker’s focus on fringe, memorable characters in society while returning to the outskirts of the adult film world of “Starlet.” In “Red Rocket,” Rex (who apparently has some minor history of his own in the adult film world but is better known for his time on MTV and work in the “Scary Movie” series) plays Mikey Saber, a very successful, award-winning porn star (at least, according to him) who also has burned a lot of bridges in L.A. So he returns to his small town near Galveston, Texas, reuniting with his estranged wife (Bree Elrod), if reuniting is the word for crashing on a couch and occasionally having sex while also selling weed to contribute rent money. Mikey bums rides with a neighbor (Ethan Darbone) and flirts with a girl who works at the local donut shop and goes by Strawberry (Suzanna Son) and is three weeks shy of 18. “Legal as an eagle,” he says of the 17-year-old, and I guess we’ll have to take his word for his knowledge of the state’s age of consent. Somehow, Mikey is quick on his feet and charismatic despite being a top-tier mooch. He engages with people transactionally and won’t hesitate to run away from an ordeal, even if it means you taking the fall and him avoiding consequences.
What Baker does, miraculously and with major compliments to Rex’s energetic, surprising, complex performance along with Baker’s knack for casting and directing talented non-actors, is bring viewers into the mindset of someone who can, for whatever reason, feel warmly for a person with less-than-stellar intentions/morals. Certainly not everyone finds Mikey’s antics amusing, and on the surface “Red Rocket” is a story about a guy who doesn’t have much more than an excuse for everything and an idea of how everyone can fit into his orbit. This, the subtle political horror suggests without judgment or scolding, is where a self-centered liar logically exists: on the edges, outside of stable relationships, doomed to jump from person to person and failure to failure. That this happens in tandem with the shocking, tragic political ascension of a pathological liar who also and much more destructively turns everything in his path to ruins deserves extensive analysis by anyone trying to understand the current state of America and where to go from here.
That sort of thing sure isn’t what you expect from a very funny comedy that sometimes plays like the latter scenes of a rural “Boogie Nights.” “Red Rocket,” for the most part, exists in the daytime, in broad daylight, as the world revolves around relationships, and what everyone can or can’t get away with.
A
ARE YOU A “SAVED BY THE BELL” FAN?
Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)
GET 100 STORIES FOR JUST $4.99