As seen at AFI
Fest 2007:
There are many
things wrong with Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, but
underneath all of its flashy excess, one realizes the true
reason why the movie fails: it is just another ridiculous,
uninformed cinematic assault on the Bush Administration. Like
Donnie Darko (Kelly's previous feature) on steroids, the
movie talks in circles and engages in mindless tomfoolery at
will (only this time without the brains to back it up). For much
of the running length, most viewers will have no clue what’s
going on in terms of the central story, but the movie’s thesis
boils down to the following simple idea: the Bush Administration
is violating the civil liberties of Americans on a regular basis
and this will ultimately lead to the United States becoming a
fascist state led by Neo-Conservatives. In other words,
Southland Tales may seem to be one of the most complex
mindfucks in the history of filmmaking, but it really only
exists to vocalize one-dimensional and half-baked political
assertions.
Southland
Tales takes place in July 2008, in a radically different
United States than the one that we live in today. In other
words: the country has fallen by the wayside and it’s all Bush’s
fault. After two towns in Texas, El Paso and Albeine, were
nuclear-bombed and World War III commenced, the U.S. Government
soon militarized and decided to abuse the Patriot Act in order
to develop an organization called USIdent, which monitors
everyone, everywhere, all the time. And the fascistic ways of
said government aren’t about to change; Republican Senator Bobby
Frost is poised to win the 2008 Presidential Election against
Hillary Clinton by a landslide.
Within the
context this wild climate, the viewer is introduced to three
main characters. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Boxer Santeros, a
famous actor (clearly modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger) who
wakes up in the desert with a mysterious case of amnesia. He
finds his way back to his native Los Angeles, trying to stay
under government radar in the fear that he was kidnapped by a
covert organization. In L.A., he returns home to porn-star
Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who he is cheating on his
wife (Senator Frost’s daughter, played by Mandy Moore) with.
Krysta and Boxer intend to make a movie together, in which he
will star as protagonist Jericho Kane. In order to research the
role of Jericho, Boxer studies a man who he assumes to be LAPD
Officer Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott). What Boxer
doesn’t know is that Roland is actually Ronald, Roland’s twin
brother, who is conspiring with a group of Neo-Marxists led by
his mother and Krysta Now in an elaborate political plot.
Ronald will commit a racist crime as a cop while Boxer is with
him, which will in turn make Boxer look bad for being present at
the scene. When public opinion of Boxer drops, so will that of
his wife and her father, the President-to-be. As a result,
Clinton will hopefully reign victorious in the upcoming election
and, in the deluded view of the Neo-Marxists, perhaps restore
justice in America.
Oh, and I forgot
to include a few more key plot elements in my synopsis. The
whole thing is narrated by an Iraq War Veteran played by Justin
Timberlake, who I should also mention performs a karaoke
rendition of The Killers’ “All These Things That I Have Done”
directly to the camera toward the end of the second act. And
then there’s also the fact that, as the plot unfolds to
Timberlake’s narration, Boxer comes to believe that he actually
is his character, Jericho. Or maybe he really is Jericho,
because a real time-rift that was caused by tectonic-plate
movement mentioned in his film-script could truly be real, and
therefore could have led Boxer to split into two separate
people, one in the past and one in the present. (The split
would’ve occurred sometime between when he left Los Angeles and
when he woke up in the desert.)
If that all
sounds complicated, you haven’t heard the half of it. The main
problem with the picture is that Kelly assumes that the audience
will confuse complicated for complex and therefore
come to regard him as some kind of legit socio-political
commentator. Just about everything that Southland Tales
has to say about America is left-wing propaganda without any
cohesive backing. The movie is an enraged piece of art that
cannot justify its own enragement.
Still, I would
be lying if I didn’t say that I thought the whole thing was
preposterously entertaining in more ways than one. As conscious
as I am of the fact that Southland Tales represents
complete cinematic inanity, I have a bit of a soft-spot for it.
After all, who else but Richard Kelly would dare to commit the
aforementioned vision to the silver-screen? And who else would
try to convince studios to finance the project with what appears
to be well over $50 million worth of cash? And, if that wasn’t
enough, who else would then recruit Sarah Michelle Gellar,
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Kevin
Smith, and Seann William Scott to star in this movie?
Truth be told, I admire Kelly as much as I hate him for failing
and daring to fail in such an off-the-wall, idiotic way.
I don’t want to
claim that there aren’t many isolated moments of beauty in
Southland Tales, because there are. For this reason, the
film’s near 150-minute running length flies by rather quickly.
Kelly gets career-best performances out of Gellar (who has never
been sexier) and Johnson, despite the absurdity of their roles.
Of what significance their work is, I dunno. You tell me whether
or not acting can be significant even when the film that it
belongs to is thoroughly insignificant itself. Regardless, the
overall loopy quality that Gellar and Johnson embody here steals
a host of scenes. The visual effects and cinematography of the
film are also worth mentioning, with particularly striking
images coming from a sequence towards the end of the film in a
flying-over-Los Angeles sequence involving brothers Ronald and
Roland.
My favorite
moments of Southland Tales were those in which I didn’t
understand a lick of what was going on. During said moments, I
found myself not caught up in the half-assed statements that
Kelly tries to make, but rather the movie’s loony atmosphere and
appearance. On the whole, however, the film proves a failure
that I am able to appreciate only as a basic exercise in chaos.
That Southland Tales somehow comes together to form
something (even if it isn’t inherently good) is
somewhat of a cinematic miracle. I may not like what Kelly says
or the manner in which he says it, but I certainly recognize his
vision as a complete work of art, which, with so much shit
going on in the immediate plot and even more shit taking
place in the viewer’s mind, is an accomplishment in and of
itself.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 11.20.2007
Screened on:
11.3.2007 at the ArcLight Cinemas
in Hollywood, CA.
Southland Tales is rated R and runs 144
minutes.
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