But right now it’s one of the best things around. It’s one of those films that you luck into, rather than plan to see, maybe. Ironically or not, it takes a brilliant low-budget movie like Red Rocket to connect those dots more effectively than films with fifty times its budget. TV rubbish, low-rent smut, modern politics…. While Lexi and her mother watch their reality shows and Judge Judy knock-offs, sharing the TV screens is the campaigning Donald Trump. She sees Mikey as her ticket out of Texas, while Mikey sees Strawberry as his way back into fame and fortune.īut anyone looking at this modern Bonnie and Clyde would be unwise to bet on their prospects. Strawberry may be young but she’s not naïve. After years trawling the underworld of Z-grade independent movies, Rex takes hold of the character of Mikey Saber and runs with it.Įven a loser can get lucky sometimes, thinks Mikey when he runs into Strawberry. The other secret weapon of Red Rocket is star Rex. He knows how to make us interested in his characters and - even rarer - to like people who on the surface are totally unlikeable. The first is writer/director Baker.īaker has a gift – one you don’t learn in courses on “How to make movies that sell”. Rodriguez shared her thoughts directly with Baker: So I know you say that you don’t do your movies to try to teach people anything, Rodriguez said. Having got this far – and I haven’t even mentioned young Strawberry who’s got trouble written all over her – I suspect some of you are wondering “Why should I care what happens to these unsavoury people?” Though Baker says he didn’t set out to teach any lessons with Red Rocket, two of his actresses agree there are still worthwhile takeaways. ![]() So next he has to find paying work, and the only people hiring aren’t exactly legal.īut beggars can’t be choosers, so Mikey sets off down the Primrose Path on a borrowed girl’s bike, but always keeping an eye out for opportunity. Mikey lasted longer but got into trouble with too many people – hence the black eyes and the trip back home. Lexi lasted a couple of years in the “Adult Film Business” before she quit it – and Mikey - and went home. Not Tinseltown, Lala Land Hollywood - real Hollywood where you take whatever job is going. He ran away from Texas with Lexi and they ended up in Hollywood. Mikey’s been living off the books now for years. Mikey sweet-talks Lexi into putting him up – he can sleep on the couch in front of the TV – while he looks for work. Sinopsis: Mikey Saber era una gran estrella del cine porno, pero su época dorada ya ha pasado y su carrera se encuentra en decadencia. He knocks at the door of his estranged wife Lexi, where she lives with her deadbeat mother Lil. Red Rocket es una película dirigida por Sean Baker con Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, Suzanna Son. Mikey Saber gets off the bus with nothing to his name but the clothes he’s standing up in and two black eyes. And his latest Red Rocket brings the action to hard-scrabble Texas. The follow up - the brilliant Florida Project with Willem Dafoe - centred on the 6-year-old daughter of another prostitute. ![]() ![]() Red Rocket screened at the Cannes film festival, and is released in UK cinemas on 11 March.Baker seems to have a thing about outsiders. You can picture Mikey growing old like the local people in Texas City, who are so very unimpressed to see him back. But for all this, there is something poignant and even sympathetic about Mikey and Strawberry, and Baker lets us see that it would be sad if they wound up back in Texas City, but also just as sad if they made it to Los Angeles. However, he is often far from successful in this, and there is an awful moment when he is savagely beaten up by the parents of Strawberry’s ex-boyfriend. Mikey is a fast-talking hustler who has the predator-parasite’s instinct for drawing other people into his orbit, and convincing them that his interests are their interests. ![]() Amusingly, when the plot calls for a multi-vehicle pileup, Baker shows us Mikey’s car going out of control, then cuts to the aftermath and reuses what appears to be genuine TV news footage of mangled cars on the freeway. This is vivid, real-life film-making, without the need of an epic budget. The year happens to be 2016, when Hillary Clinton is facing off with Donald Trump for the US presidency, but it is tempting to read Mikey as the embodiment of Trump right now in 2021, in retreat from a disaster, brooding on his imminent return.
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