The year is winding down and I’m still plenty behind on reviews, so I’m going to be mixing in some stuff I hadn’t gotten to earlier and some of the newer films. Sean Baker’s uniquely authentic, indie style remains a constant in his projects and intentionally pushes back against the studio model in Red Rocket.
Mikey is a down-on-his-luck ex-pornstar who returns to his hometown of Texas City, after crashing and burning in Los Angeles. Looking for favors from anyone he knows, including his estranged wife and mother-in-law, he convinces them to let him crash on their couch while he figures things out.
Everybody knows someone like Mikey. That guy who always blames everyone else for his problems and is completely incapable of being introspective in the slightest. The kind of person who has no sense of his actions beyond himself. Sean Baker knows we all know someone like this and that’s why he puts him front and center, but it didn’t come without risk.
Mikey is the kind of character who would typically be a supporting role because, while he’s funny, he’s ultimately a huge scum bag with no moral compass (or a broken one). A big part of what makes this movie enjoyable is watching him be comically shitty, and I appreciate that challenge. However, we run into the problem of character development and arcs and Mikey has neither of those. In most cases, I’d be critical of that aspect but Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch did this by design. We watch Mikey do a variety of unsavory things and ultimately want him to have that epiphany, that “Aha!” moment, where he takes responsibility and changes the narrative. That’s not this story. This is a story about that asshole who’s so oblivious, that despite the many signs that point to him being his biggest problem and all the damage he leaves in his wake, he still can’t see past his own selfish bullshit.
That’s a weird place to leave off and this movie has a particularly abrupt ending, but the film is still well-executed. The problem I found with the approach is redundancy. As I watched Mikey bounce his bullshit from one person to the next, the novelty began to fade and I found myself asking “where is this going?” and “how long is this movie?” I don’t walk out of movies, so I am willing to extend some courtesy on the first part but it’s never a good thing when the movie begins to feel long. The runtime is only just over two hours, so that’s not even exceptionally long, but it spends a decent amount of time spinning its wheels retreading ground that’s already been covered. Maybe Baker is really drilling home the nuances of the character but the pacing is a little slow as a result and it felt like he could have left 15-20 minutes on the editing room floor.
The upside of that equation is getting more from Simon Rex’s excellent lead performance. Rex has been in the business since the mid-90s but has mostly been relegated to the parodies and the B-movie circuit, so it was nice to see him get this opportunity and run with it. There are definitely some parallels between Rex and his character that likely led Baker to bring him in on the film. As I mentioned, Mikey is no hero. He’s a scumbag, but Rex is so good in the role that it does challenge the audience to like him despite some very nefarious behavior. He delivered one of the better performances of the year and it should certainly lead to other opportunities.
The vast majority of the remaining cast had little to nothing in the way of screen credits but it worked for creating a more authentic feel. You didn’t feel like you were watching actors play their characters and that was by design. Bree Elrod plays Mikey’s wife Lexi and they set the tone for the whole film right out of the gates. Suzanna Son is also relatively unknown but she shines as Strawberry who becomes the object of Mikey’s fascination. Son is a composer also and there’s a scene where she gets to showcase her singing voice, sort of out of nowhere.
The whole film was shot in less than a month, and there’s something frenetic about that approach that comes through the camera. The small-town locale provides a bottom-up look at a specific piece of American life that’s typically underrepresented on film, but always a focus of Baker’s. There’s a reason it was in the competition for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and selected by the National Board of Review as a Top-10 film of 2021. I don’t have it ranked that high but I do appreciate a lot about the minimalist approach and can understand keeping it in the conversation as one of the year’s best films.
Recommendation: If you appreciate indie filmmaking, you aren’t going to find many better examples than this. It’s decidedly adult and just be prepared for a challenge.
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