3.5 stars out of 5
Red Rocket is the new film from Sean Baker, writer/director of The Florida Project. I really liked the vibe and strong sense of place in that movie, and the great performance from Willem Dafoe. (What I didn’t like: There were so many SCREAMING KIDS in the story.) With this follow-up, Baker cements his understanding of the not-working class, swapping a run-down Florida motel for the scrubby outskirts of Texan oil refineries. Simon Rex stars as Mikey, back in town from Los Angeles, showing up at the door of Lexi (Bree Elrod) because he has nowhere else to go. Baker deftly allows the backstory to unfold slowly: Turns out Mikey is married to Lexi, and also he is a porn star, and also [no spoilers].
This is being marketed as a comedy and there are many laughs, but there’s a real underlying sadness at play. Mikey is a charmer and a low-rent hustler, a grown-ass man tooling around town on a bicycle. Rex plays him with a Bill Murray-esque energy and a vague effeminate quality that undercuts his proud hetero-studliness. It’s the kind of character that, against your better judgement, you root for, until you don’t anymore. Because Mikey is a user of anyone who shows him kindness: Lexi, worshipful neighbor Lonny, on-the-edge-of-18 Strawberry (Suzanna Son) who works at the donut shop. The 2016 presidential race hangs in the background here and it’s fitting, as we learned that a big percentage of the country, like Mikey, only cares about themselves.
While Dafoe was The Florida Project’s moral center, this movie really doesn’t have one, so it’s pretty bleak. There’s a real lonesomeness too, captured nicely in shots of empty nighttime streets in the dull glow of refinery lights. Lonny and Mikey, disconnected from the rest of the world, usually drive on the access road instead of the highway.
Structurally, the first two thirds of the movie doesn’t have much plot, and then the final third has too much. With one twist I became much more involved in the story and yet with the next I felt somewhat distanced. And without a strong ending, Red Rocket fizzles out a bit.
Jack Silbert, curator