I once heard an ex-police officer discourse on the types of people he would encounter in a normal course of his rounds. He related that most people, when being approached by an officer of the law, woul just shut up and do what they are told. Then there were not so bright people who would have hostile reactions, and usually that did not end so well with them. Then there was this one particular type of person, neither hostile nor compliant and regardless of their level of obvious guilt, could always be counted on to try to talk themselves out of their situation for far longer than any civilian. These guys, and all of them are guys, were pimps and their stamina for bullshitting was and is notorious and unsurpassed.
We don’t know anything about Mikey Saber (played by Simon Rex) when he shows up at his ex-wife’s house in Galveston, Texas one hot summer afternoon. He’s just this guy with no luggage, no money, and bruises on his face. But, boy does he have a lot to say. Neither his ex-wife, Lexi (played by Bree Elrod) or her mother Lil (played by Brenda Deiss) want anything to do with him. They tell him to go away something like ten times over the course of a five minute conversation. But he keeps talking and talking and talking and by the end of it, he’s inside taking a shower and sleeping on the couch (commando style). He just needs a place to crash for a little bit. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ll recognize this guy. He has nothing and he won’t stop bragging about it. No prospects but a lot of plans. He’s that guy.
The writer/director of “Red Rocket” is one of the best around, Sean Baker. I was so impressed by two movies of his, “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project”, that I searched for and saw every movie he has ever made. They are all very good especially in light of that fact that he has no money. His first film, “Take Out” is about as good a movie can be with a budget of $3,000 (yes, I double checked that amazing figure). Sean Baker specializes in movies about people on the margins of society, a lot of them involved in the sex industry, but his movies aren’t exposes, sob stories, or indictments. They are simply stories about these people. His movie “Starlet” was centered on a pornographic actress and although she interacted with characters from the industry, the main plot was her relationship with an elderly woman she met at a garage sale who liked to play bingo. The main plot was so normal that it could have been found in any independent film. What made it so unlike any other movie though is that halfway through the movie, the main character performs an explicit sex scene in a room with a camera crew, as if Sean Baker’s cinematic mission is to demonstrate that the people you see delivering your food (“Take Out”), selling counterfeit bags on Canal Street (“Prince of Broadway”), streetwalking (“Tangerine”) have full lives outside the narrow interactions they have with the mainstream.
Mikey Saber we learn is a veteran male porn star. This, he explains, is why he has a twenty year gap in the resume he is submitting to various local businesses. Mikey’s job search is getting anywhere so he looks up the woman he used to sell weed to like twenty years ago. She is suspicious, but gives him a bag to see what he can do with it. The movie does a smart thing by having every character dislike Mikey without explaining why. In response, the audience’s natural inclination is to feel like Mikey is being treated unfairly, and since Mikey has charm, we become seduced (to an extent). After all, Mikey is actively trying to make it back on his feet. He mows the lawn, is nice enough, and once his marijuana business starts blooming, he starts paying rent. Then he starts saying and doing things that slowly throw up a bunch of red flags. Then a few other things happen and now we have a better idea of why noone wanted Mikey back in town. There is an eminently satisfying third act, that like all great third acts, feels both unpredictable and inevitable. The storytelling craft involved is so professional that you are surprised it could exist in a movie that has such an indie down-to-earth feel to it, that is until you remember that Sean Baker made this movie and that he always brings the story home in the clutch.
This movie is a great demonstration between empathy and sympathy. As Roger Ebert once put it, movie’s are empathy machines. They place the viewer in the shoes of different people in different situations and make them feel how they feel. But, this is not to say that it makes the viewer agree with the choices of different people. That would be sympathy. All empathy does is explain different points of view. Sean Baker handles all the scenes in this movie with empathy, that is he provides the viewer a clear understanding of what is going on with the characters, but he doesn’t sermonize and he doesn’t have a lot of weird camera angles and a musical score to suggest how you should feel about it. In particular, Mikey Saber, while crashing on the couch of his ex-wife, strikes up an affair with a teenager who works at a local coffee and donut shop. There is a twenty year age difference here. Your normal movie would proactively let the viewer know that it disapproves. “Red Rocket” doesn’t do that. It just shows it to you and let’s you figure out how you feel about it. All of Baker’s movies are kind of incredible like that. The movie has a point of view, but it keeps in hidden, in order to better entertain you. (That is, once a movie shows its ideological viewpoint, it becomes a predictable exercise in propaganda. Propaganda as Oliver Stone once quipped, is boring because it takes all conflict out of a story, much like how a professional sports game becomes boring once it becomes a blowout.)
If there is one criticism I may throw at Sean Baker, it is an unfair one. When I watch the early films of other great directors, you can discover hitherto unknown great performances by then unknown actors that later became respected stars. You don’t get that with Sean because twenty years in, he does not reuse actors and still casts complete unknowns in all his movies. Two of the best performances here (Ethan Darbone as Lonnie and Brenda Deiss as Lil) are from non-actors. None of the actual actors have ever been in a Sean Baker film before. (Having said that, in her film debut as Ms. Phan, the great deadpan owner of the donut shop, is none other than Shih-Ching Tsou, Baker’s co-producer on every single one of his films since “Take Out”. I’m not sure what she does, but clearly, she deserves a lot of credit). Mikey Saber is played by Simon Rex, who is a long time MTV Disc Jockey with the stage name of “Dirt Nasty” and whose film credits include “Scary Movie 4” “Superhero Movie” and “Scary Movie 5”. His performance is so good that I wouldn’t be surprised he got nominated for an Academy Award. And either that means he was a diamond in the rough that no-one noticed for twenty years, or perhaps, with the right material and crew, acting isn’t that hard. The only recurring actor in Sean Baker’s movies is Karren Karagulian, who has several main roles in Sean Baker’s earlier movies “Prince of Broadway”, “Starlet”, and “Tangerine” (He’s the married-with-children Armenian immigrant taxi-driver who prefers transgender prostitutes). But Karren only has cameos in Baker’s last two films and will never blow up to movie stardom because, well, he’s looks like a normal Armenian man. Look, if Baker did reuse actors maybe his movies wouldn’t feel so raw and real all the time. So the criticism is unfair. I’ll take what I can get.
