![]() Rex, a former MTV VJ, rapper (he went by the moniker Dirt Nasty), comedian, and actor, is an inspired casting choice. Any audience member likely knows that Mikey is bad news, as do all the people in his life, but he’s still mesmerizing as he fires up his motormouth and lets another self-aggrandizing monologue loose. Red Rocket is set in the months leading up to the 2016 election-occasional snippets overheard on TV news discuss Donald Trump’s presidential campaign-and Baker clearly wants the viewer to draw a connection between the outsize personalities of the former president and his witless but street-smart protagonist. Despite obvious enmity from Lexi and her mother (Brenda Deiss), Mikey somehow talks them into letting him crash, and from there he gets busy with a few foolish schemes-dealing drugs, hooking up with old high-school friends, and trying to worm his way into the affections of a pretty 17-year-old he meets at a local doughnut shop. Mikey is a former porn star given to bragging about his many accolades in the industry, but he has fallen on hard-enough times to have to return to his birthplace of Texas City, Texas, and knock on the door of his estranged wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod). Read: The Florida Project is one of 2017’s best films Red Rocket is far more sour than sweet, but that’s part of the point Mikey is a reprehensible fellow, but he’s clawed his way through life by sheer force of will, and as such, the camera simply can’t look away. Both of those films were empathetic works about people enduring incredibly challenging circumstances-Baker, who often casts first-time actors in his work, is a master of displaying unvarnished truth on-screen. Baker knows, though, that for all its non-subtlety, “Bye Bye Bye” is still as catchy as it was the day of its release, and he uses it to suggest the same of Mikey (played by Simon Rex): He’s his own kind of relic, rolling back into his hometown after a failed career in Los Angeles, but he’s still got a glint of charm to him.īaker has always told small-scale stories set on the margins of America-2015’s Tangerinewas a bittersweet Christmas tale about trans sex workers, and 2017’s The Florida Project was about “hidden homeless” families living in a motel. The song is a piece of mainstream pop from yesteryear (it’s a shiver-inducing 21 years old), and its usage in this arty indie film seems laced with irony. Red Rocket, while feeling messy at points (perhaps intentionally), is a chaotically-spun yarn about people living on the fringes of acceptable society, one that’s regularly unpleasant, but always compelling.Mikey Saber, the preening, confident chump who’s the ostensible hero of Sean Baker’s new film, Red Rocket, enters on-screen to a loud and familiar tune: “Bye Bye Bye,” by *NSync. ![]() Mikey’s exploitation of an underage girl is extremely uncomfortable, but as we descend into his psychology, Baker makes his salient point: having a career in porn has broken Mikey’s brain, irrevocably damaging the way he sees people and ruining his ability to build relationships where he doesn’t benefit in some way. The performance alone isn’t what makes Red Rocket engaging the snappy editing has perfect comic rhythm and timing, making transitions punchlines as it effortlessly bounces to the next scene.Īs Mikey explores an alarming relationship with a 17-year-old, Strawberry (Suzanna Son), Baker tests the audience’s stomach for his protagonist’s vile behaviour. ![]() His constant lying and sickly charisma make you anxious to let him ever leave your sight. Mikey is manipulative, pathetic, and completely indefensible. Baker and Simon’s collaboration gives us the strongest lead performance in the director’s filmography. ![]()
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