Red Rocket: Der Mit der Hunderute

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.

Directed by Sean Baker (same guy behind The Florida Project), Red Rocket is a gritty, funny slice-of-life about Mikey Saber, a washed-up adult film star who slinks back to his Texas hometown like a raccoon in a leather jacket. Simon Rex, who you might remember from his goofy MTV/Vine days, kills it in this role - charming, pathetic, infuriating, and somehow still magnetic. It's like watching a human car crash in slow motion, and you just can't look away. The movie doesn't follow a traditional plot so much as it vibes its way through Mikey's manipulative antics and awkward reunions - with his estranged wife and a teenage girl named Strawberry, who might just be his ticket back to fame. (Yeah. It gets uncomfortable. So.) What makes Red Rocket stand out is how real it feels. Baker uses real locations, a lot of non-actors, and that washed-out, sunburnt cinematography that makes everything feel lived-in and sticky. Like you can almost smell the dollar store candles and fried dough. It's not a movie for everyone - it's messy, icky, and the main character is a disaster. But it's also sharp, satirical, hilarious, and unafraid to go there. If you like your movies polished and heroic, run far away. But if you're into raw, unfiltered storytelling with a big side of "what did I just watch?" - then Red Rocket might just rocket to the top of your indie faves list. My verdict? One sleazy thumb way, way up.

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.

I watched the movie because the trailer mentioned it would be about porno. Then as I watched the movie I realized; the trailer did not say it was going to be about porno it just said it was about a porn star.

It's kinda funny cause if I'm not mistaken, the movie's lead, Simon Rex had a promising career as one of the icons of an MTV generation until he got caught in a porn scandal of his own. I feel like that may have had something to do with director, Sean Baker picking Rex and I also think this had something to do with Rex being so good as Mike, a male porn star with a long career filled with many highs and glories, but fell apart really fast and with nothing to fall back on he comes back to a place he never thought he come back to because he had no choice.

As a movie, I can compare Red Rocket to a roller-coaster ride. It's a nice exciting climb all the way to the top and when it starts going down its fun, but the overall free fall is actually lackluster.

The problem here is that the movie is a character piece. This film relies heavily on Simon Rex playing Mike and our focus on who is character is, to the point that the story being told is sacrificed for it. The importance of the movie is watching Rex play this character, and in that portrait of the character we got a completed movie, but the way the story was laid out. It does not feel complete.

I do love the rawness of the film. Rex is the only actor I know by name and the fact that I know him at all as an actor ages me. It's possible that other actors in this movie did things I'm unfamiliar with but as far as I'm concern it looks like Sean Baker just used the random folks, he found in the small Texas town this movie's about.

Even if I'm a bit iffy about how the story stops short, I'm satisfied with this movie because it was an interesting story that stayed interesting from beginning to end.

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.