Film Review: Red Rocket
Images courtesy of A24.
Does spending a long period of time with a character, be it in a T.V show or movie, necessitate the audience empathising with them regardless of how reprehensible they are?
Seeing the decision-making and triggers laid bare of a character can, at times, evoke sympathy for those with dubious life choices. Some glaring examples may include Walter White or Tony Soprano, whose fictional criminality is endorsed by a burgeoning viewership. While they live by their own honour, is it possible to feel compassion toward an entirely self-serving and self-destructive individual that leeches off everyone around him, leading to an inevitable implosion of everyone’s lives?
Albeit that interpretation is subjective, and not as clear-cut in the film, Sean Baker’s Red Rocket posits a fascinating duality through the character of Mikey Sable (Simon Rex), whose over-blown ego and narcissism leads to disastrous outcomes, but by virtue of spending time with him, also generates a warmth and care for his determination to fulfil his delusions.
In short, Mikey, a washed-up porn star, abruptly turns up to his estranged wife’s house in his hometown of Texas, battered and bruised and with no baggage in tow. After the two-day trip from L.A, he plays up the charm to his wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her elderly mother Lil (Brenda Deiss), pleading them for a chance to stay with them till he gets back on his feet. The thumping song ‘Bye Bye Bye’ by NSYNC explodes at the seams to open and close the film as a kind of theme of Mikey’s larger-than-life personality manacled by this small town.
As he returns, he re-acquaints himself with familiar haunts, such as local drug dealers to sell weed and pay board. He proudly waxes lyrical on his career as a porn actor and producer, winning three consecutive awards for ‘Best Oral’ (not speech), and uplifting the careers of his female co-stars. Whatever happened in his previous life must have been brutal to make him this desperate, but his fast-talking manipulation conceals the truth more than it reveals.
Here, the fringes of Texas City, Texas are lovingly portrayed in the film, with glorious purple and yellow sunsets as Mikey weaves a child’s bike through the roads. Even small victories are worth noting, such as Mikey buying a second-hand glass ashtray that enhances the ragged décor of Lexi’s domicile.
Soon after earning his first few bucks, Mikey treats Lexi and Lil to a feast at the euphemistically named Donut Hole, a fast-food café in town. The joint is painted with sunny ambers on the wall, and the flavoured doughnut’s glisten in the sunlight. There, he catches a glimpse of the 17-year-old cashier Rae Lee, but everyone calls her Strawberry, which sparks a surreptitious plan for Mikey to enter back in the porn industry. At this juncture, Mikey’s moral compass is truly skewed as he grooms this underage girl, who appears infatuated with the older man. The filmmaker’s investment in such a sleazy and sketchy character imbues an uneasiness in the audience. One might be hoping he comes to an epiphany of his faults rather than succeeding in soliciting sex.
He doesn’t.
Though, a rich compassion is shown toward minor characters that all scrape to make ends meet. An equally tragic and amusing scene involves Mikey’s friend Lonnie, whom Mikey baby-sat as a child decades earlier. Lonnie wears a fake veteran’s uniform to procure money at a shopping mall. Mikey rebukes this scheme, as well as the ruffians that beat him up for it, but the irony is not lost on anyone that Mikey’s choices are as bad if not worse.
He may sound like a loathsome character, but Simon Rex’s performance of Mikey is a beautifully rendered character study and should be left up to the individual viewer as to what multiplicity of feelings he evokes. His influence on those around him is truly a car crash in slow motion: you want to look away, but you can’t stop watching.
3.5 stars
Red Rocket is showing in select cinemas from Thursday, 6th January 2022.