Film Review: Red Rocket

Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Suzanna Son
Running time: 128 minutes

“You said you were never gonna step a foot in Texas again,” says Lexi to her estranged, porn-star husband Mikey Saber, who retorts: “And then the world fucked me – what can I say?” Specifically, there’s always one thing that manages to bend over director Sean Baker's protagonists and have its way with them: the American Dream.

In the case of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), the would-be hero of Baker’s Red Rocket, the dream is doing him dirty. After seventeen years living it up in LA and dipping more than just his toe into the adult entertainment industry, his pursuit of stardom has come full circle and he now finds himself back in hometown of Texas City, bloody and bruised with his abnormally-large tail between his legs. His reasons for leaving get lost in translation, but from what I can decipher from his scattershot mouth it has something to do with a crack den, hookers and some homeless guys giving him a beating. I could be wrong though – you’ll find out, as I did, that you’ve got to take everything this man says with a pinch of salt. He’s back now though, whether his wife Lexi and her mother Lil like it or not (they don’t) and he turns up on their front porch unannounced, begging for a place to stay. “I know this is unexpected” … “Nothing with you is unexpected”. Lexi’s (Bree Elrod) staunch defences are eventually eroded by Mikey’s gab and the doors are opened – if he pays the rent, of course. Fortunately for him, Mikey eventually manages to hustle his way into a drug dealing gig and his rags turns to riches.

Simon Rex – pulled from the realms of obscurity in a casting masterstroke – creates a fascinating portrait of unbridled narcissism, and one of the most magnetic ne’er-do-wells to grace the screen in recent years. Sean Baker uses a recurring shot when a character is subjugated to one of Mikey’s tangents – the camera slowly zooms on the unwilling victim, with Mikey buzzing in and out of frame with enthusiastic animation. These scenes are simultaneously hilarious and oppressive – we wince as this totally self-serving character drowns out any semblance of empathy his hostage may have as if he were a conversational boa constrictor. No doubt some viewers will find Mikey a hard man to spend 130 minutes with, but Rex really does make the whole thing work with his happy-go-lucky swagger and puppy dog eyes. His douchebag charisma lures us into a false sense of security – maybe this guy even has a redemptive arc somewhere down the line. Fool me once, shame on you…

Baker has always exposed the hidden vestiges of Americana, and with Red Rocket, his vision of Texas City – with its dusty streets and vast, omnipresent refinery plants – has brought to light a community I never knew existed. Beautifully authentic and expansive, it reminded me of Seventies films like Scarecrow, Fat City and Paper Moon. A far cry from the glitz of LA that Mikey claims to have revelled in, it makes the down-and-out huckster’s delusions of grandeur set against small-town life all the more hilarious.

For all its gritty realism and salt-of-the-earth faces, what lasts for Red Rocket is the undercurrent of satire that serves as a scathing indictment of the American condition. Some of Mikey’s dialogue – particularly a scene in which he’s trying to seduce a 17-year-old waitress at a donut shop – seems to be lifted straight from one of his pornos and Baker seems to be embracing the tackiness of that industry while also highlighting the performative nature of the American Dream. But no matter how much people try to cling onto the phallusy, like the smoke rolling out of the refinery plants and the spliffs Mikey pedals, their ideals and ambitions always evaporate into the ether. But the cycle begins again. 

Did you know? In the Nineties, Simon Rex starred in solo masturbation videos under the alias “Sebastian”. 

Red Rocket is showing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 24 March