Film Review – Red Rocket (2021)
Sean Baker’s cinematic comfort zone is guaranteed to take you out of yours. From the trans prostitutes of Tangerine to the kids living in poverty next door to the Disney dreamland in The Florida Project, his world is among people on the edge of society – literally and figuratively. For his latest, Red Rocket, the physical location shifts to Texas, but without a cowboy or Stetson in sight.
Bruised, battered and without a stitch of luggage, Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) arrives back in his equally shabby hometown of Texas City, Texas after and long and apparently successful career in the porn industry. But, with nowhere to live and empty pockets, he throws himself on the not-so-tender mercies of his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother, Lil (Brenda Deiss). His former profession sabotages any chance of getting a job, so eases into something less legal and the money starts to flow. But meeting teenager Strawberry (Suzanna Son) in the local doughnut store makes him hanker for the LA lifestyle again – and he knows exactly how she can help him get back to his glory days.
Mikey doesn’t get the warmest of welcomes when he shows up. Unsurprisingly, his ex isn’t over the moon about his return, but she’s not the only one. Not everybody remembers him and the reactions of those that do speak volumes. The archetypal motor mouth hustler, he simply doesn’t know when to stop talking or lying and the words “growing up” haven’t entered into his vocabulary. Nor, given the evidence on screen, are they ever likely to, despite what for others would be a transformative experience. All credit to Simon Rex’s firecracker performance that, while his character’s antics are outrageous, there is still something sufficiently endearing – nay charming – about him to make you shake your head indulgently as you laugh at just how appalling he really is.
But, while Mikey craves and gets all the attention – and won Rex the Spirit Award for Best Lead Actor this week – Red Rocket is much more than a one-man show. Once again, Baker shows himself to be the master of re-creating the opposite of the American dream, this time a never-ending oil refinery with a small, shabby town tacked on to it. The massive industrial plant, with its ugly pipes and sulphurous clouds, dwarfs everything in its shadow, including the peeling residential houses. There is simply no escape from it. And Baker can’t resist adding some recent politics to drag it even closer to a living nightmare. The year is 2016, Trump and Hillary Clinton are slugging it out on TV and a huge blue billboard proclaims the future president’s slogan. We all remember it and its irony in this particular town is writ large.
The remainder of Baker’s canvas is filled in with a series of colourful individuals who are dragged – willingly or otherwise – into Mikey’s increasingly tangled web. From the barely legal, Lolita-esque Strawberry in her milkshake pink house to the permanently unimpressed and incongruously named June (Brittney Rodriguez), the daughter of the local drug dealer, they all have a hand in making sure Mikey’s thumb is kept firmly on that self-destruct button. It all takes place under the merciless Texan sun. There’s an all-pervading sense of inevitability but, for all the dreariness and despair, this is also a highly entertaining and frequently hilarious film, one that challenges you to enjoy it. And we happily accept!
★★★★
Drama, Comedy | Cert: 18 | UK Cinemas, 11 March 2022 | Universal Pictures | Dir. Sean Baker | Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, Brittney Rodriguez, Ethan Darbone.
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