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Southland
Tales
(2007)
 
Richard Kelly's follow-up to his cult 2001 sci-fi drama Donnie Darko has been one of the most anticipated films in recent years for fans of new and unique cinema. Unfortunately, the long overdue Southland Tales is more than just a disappointing sophomore effort from a promising young filmmaker; It's a terrible movie by all accounts and ranks among the most pretentious films I've ever seen.
The ensemble piece is set in a futuristic (2008?) dystopia in which the US is
embroiled in World War 3 after a nuclear attack on Texas in 2005. Former action star Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The
Rock" Johnson), son-in-law of the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, suffers from amnesia while trying to raise funding for his new screenplay, which he has written with entrepreneurial porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Little does he know that he's being used as a pawn of the left-wing anarchist Neo-Marxists (led by SNL alum Cheri Oteri) to rig the upcoming election. Along the way, he becomes entangled in the confusing life of Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott), a police officer whose relationship with his twin brother inexplicably holds the key to the oncoming apocalypse.
Confused enough yet? Wait. It gets better. The film opens with a CNN-style recap of the first three chapters of the story. Those you'll have to read in graphic novel form to really understand. The rest? Well it holds together as well as any poorly constructed pseudo-intellectual science fiction social commentary can, which is to say very loosely. If the story can't all be told in two and a half hours, perhaps it's time to cut some stuff out for the sake of the audience's enjoyment, as opposed to the masturbatory entertainment of the filmmaker's ego.
As if this weren't enough to doom the film to mediocrity, Kelly
just can't get away from complex metaphysical themes like time
travel, which he managed to make work in Donnie Darko,
and so many major plot points hinge on these amateurish ruminations
that there's little to hold onto as a viewer. They worked in Darko because
they existed within a real world that we could believe, but everything
in Southland Tales hinges upon the assumption that
the poorly conceived future of 2008 Los Angeles isn't too outrageous
for the viewer to suspend disbelief. Unfortunately, it is too
outrageous and thus, one can't even begin to ponder the intricacies
of the fourth dimension because the world in which everything
takes place is so depthless.
To add insult to injury, the casting of the film is even more
baffling than the science behind many of the film's elements.
Johnson is fine playing a dumb action star in over his head because,
well, that's who he is. And Gellar is decent as a dumb adult
film star with aspirations to brand herself all over creation.
And I'd even say that Scott does an okay job as the confused
cop and his twin alter ego, though his circumstances are so convoluted that
I can't tell whether he played the part believably or not. But Justin Timberlake
as an omnipresent celebrity soldier who narrates verses from Revelations?
Oteri as an anarchist revolutionary? Jon Lovitz as a renegade cop? The list
goes on and on. It's as if every casting decision were made not with performance
in mind, but in an effort to be as obviously ironic as possible.
It might take another six years to dislodge Kelly's tongue from his cheek
after making these choices.
The only time that this system
of casting works is in the case of the strange German company
which develops an alternative energy source using the power of
the ocean. Wallace Shawn heads up the team, supported by
Zelda Rubinstein (of Poltergeist fame),
Bai Ling as the (I assume accidentally) unseductive seductress
Serpentine, and Revenge
of the Nerds'
Curtis Armstrong. Only this group of oddballs and misfits seems
to fit the tone of their roles as the irony is built into the
characters. As for the rest, they're an inside joke on Kelly's
part, or a mean joke at the audience's expense.
Maybe I would have enjoyed the movie more had I read the online graphic novels for the first half of the story. Maybe if I'd been on the same page as Kelly I could understand the tone he was going for or the message he was trying to convey. As it is, I can't imagine a worse clusterfuck of clichéd, underdeveloped characters, laughably unprofound obsessions with messianic figures and the end of days, and a pseudo-intellectual filmmaker on an ego trip. I hope that Kelly does one of two things before his next project: either take more time to ensure he gets it right, or rush it out so he has less time to muck it up. After seeing Southland Tales, I just can't help but ask myself what he's been doing over the last six years. He certainly hasn't been making worthwhile cinema.
-Mark
Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2007 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Richard
Kelly
Writer: Richard
Kelly
Starring: Dwayne
Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Justin Timberlake,
Mandy Moore, John Lithgow, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, Kevin Smith,
Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Bai Ling
Distributor: Samuel
Goldwyn Films
Runtime: 144
min
Rating: R
Release Date: November
21, 2007
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