Even as the odometer has rolled over year after year, I don’t honestly know that there’s been a strong cinematic canon for the modern age. This isn’t in reference to great films. There are a few dozen of those annually. What is the greater issue is finding films that when you watch them, they are so rooted in a moment that you cannot help but feel transported back to that time. As squeamish as some are to suggest that a film is “dated” by relying on hyper-specificity, I’ve come to admire it as a feature’s shining achievement. Who doesn’t want to have a time capsule formatted on a Blu-Ray to play and stop, reliving a piece of nostalgia over and over until it feels like the concept of time doesn’t exist anymore?
There have been many films exploring what it means to live in a modern America, but none have recognized what it means to be alive in it. Specifically, I am focusing on a Post-2015 era, where an innocent Pepe the Frog meme can morph into hate speech, where a president could potentially launch nuclear missiles through a Twitter announcement at 3 AM while in the middle of a sex scandal with a porn star, where a racist white man can become an icon for driving out of state to Wisconsin and murder unarmed protestors in “self-defense.” Somewhere along the lines, reality cracked and attempts to understand what it means especially to Americans has become increasingly difficult. Who could even keep up with this charade?
In all seriousness, director Sean Baker is one of the few who actually feels like he’s captured that animosity that boils underneath polite intentions. He’s always had a knack for exploring socioeconomic struggles in vivid detail, but with Red Rocket (2021) he has truly outdone himself. At his side is actor Simon Rex as Mikey Saber in what is truly one of the best performances of contemporary times. There is a suffocation to how Mikey uses language. You grow exhausted just being on the same Texas street corner as him, trying to convince you that it’s cold on a summer day, that things will be different this time. He is a dirtbag through and through, but the way he defends himself with the familiar salesman tactics of M.A.G.A.-era politicians is impeccable in its unpleasantness. What Baker does is capture his morality slowly deflating. He’s long been backed up against a wall but what Mikey wonders is if he could parkour along it and escape.
There is an artistry with how Baker introduces Mikey. In any other film, the shot of Mikey looking out of a bus window as it drives into his old hometown would be more symbolic of The American Dream™. The way that he looks fondly at the smokestacks and fields suggests that he’s about to have a new start, become one of those “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” heroes that the country likes to deify. With a bruise on his cheek, it seems like redemption is before him. But this isn’t a simple story of redemption. No, Baker hides in these shots the image of a schemer eagerly preparing his greedy empire of drug dealing. So long as the money’s good, who’s to care that he’s taking advantage of the emotionally vulnerable workers of a steel plant? He’s providing a service to those in need.
Backed by the infectious lyrical motifs of N*SYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” Mikey introduces the audience to his world. It starts with something fairly telling in him trying to move back in with his wife and codependent mother. The way that Baker and Chris Bergoch write this scene is astounding, capturing everything that one needs to know about Mikey in a matter of five minutes. It could be seen as a knight infiltrating a castle, fighting a dragon to get his victory. The only difference is that Mikey uses the mundane act of taking a shower to achieve that, doing grand theatrics that almost threatens to work out of sheer embarrassment. Rex takes up so much space in the scene, smiling his way through an argument that holds the last bit of goodwill the viewer will have for the next two hours. Even then, The American Dream rings true. He HAS to turn things around. He HAS to redeem himself.
To provide a little background on Mikey Saber, he is someone who likes to talk a big game. While driving around with his sole friend, he rolls through a series of credits that are supposed to be impressive. He isn’t just an adult film actor. He’s a porn STAR, having won A.V.N.’s and worked with some of the biggest names. While it’s not entirely clear why he got the boot from Los Angeles, it’s perfectly implied that he owed someone too much money or merely wore out his welcome. In a different way, he’s arrived in Texas to screw over other the general public. Baker isn’t shy about making sure that includes women, minorities, the lower class, the emotionally vulnerable, teenagers, friends, and probably a whole lot more. Mikey is The Modern American. More than the excellent turn by Colman Domingo in Zola (2021), he embodies what a diet of self-delusion can do, where having leaders convince you because they got elected in fraudulent ways that you can make your dreams happen with a few feet on a few necks. Nobody wants to work together or, more importantly, the loudest in the group don’t like cooperation unless it benefits them directly. You are just a pawn on their road to prosperity.
It helps that Rex conveys the charisma necessary to make this story work. Some may be annoyed by his performance because of how genuinely real it feels. He’s almost too convincing when he’s weaving a new batch of lies that lets him into places he shouldn’t be. When he befriends donut shop employee Strawberry (Suzzana Son), he immediately begins to act like he owns the place, going behind the counter even after the manager says not to. He talks dirty, discussing hardcore sex with strangers believing that his prowess is somehow flattering instead of off-putting. Everywhere he goes, there is the sense that everyone is just putting up with him long enough so that he could leave. And yet he is inescapable. He is always going to be there, manipulating a situation through a brilliantly contradictory script that differs his motivations from scene to scene. What is Mikey’s truth? By the end, it really does seem like even he doesn’t know.
On some level, another thing that works in Rex’s favor is that Baker has always been sympathetic to the sex work industry. He reflects their harshness with a rawness that is uncomfortable at times but gives him a unique perspective. Red Rocket benefits from this going in, especially as Rex attempts early on to get work. When it becomes clear that he has a near two decade absence on his resume, he doesn’t take long to spill his secrets. Now, given that this is conservative Texas, it makes sense why this would go over so poorly. However, it’s a moment that was reminiscent of the real life firing of Lonna Wells, who lost her job at Taco Bell after a customer recognized her. Given that this was during a pandemic when times were even harder, there’s plenty of reason to suggest that Baker would give Mikey some levity, something that would make him familiar. The only issue is that even when things are going his way, he’s uncomfortably abusing privileges. Somehow even in growing irrelevance, he finds sadder and sadder ways to keep the focus on himself, even suggesting that grooming his girlfriend into porn is HIS gateway back into the industry.
Along with The Florida Project (2017), contemporary Baker films also have the benefit of being incredibly shot. When characters walk, the camera molds these rural towns into near postcard levels of beauty. There’s a level of artifice to them, but they’re not also out of place if Baker slapped that Red Rocket font over it. There becomes a dreamlike quality to this small town America, as if this is where Mikey’s dream has always been. By the end even as he’s sweating his last ounce of dignity through his pores, the world still seems radiant. In contrast, his internal ugliness has finally sweated through, making him an outcast of this world.
There is a feverishness to Rex’s performance. The effort to stay calm and collected quickly escapes his grasp, and yet he thinks that he has it. Even from the minute he knocks on his wife’s door, there is a hidden sense of history. The world is weary of him even in his introduction. Still, he is the great manipulator, able to make himself useful. He may not do a lot in ways that reciprocate a healthy form of love, but he’ll keep his family financially stable so long as they don’t discover what corners he’s cutting.
Red Rocket is as much about a world that has been swallowed up by Q’Anon conspiracies as it is reflective of the economic struggle that has only gotten worse since its release. Everyone is struggling to make ends meet, but most have too much dignity and compassion to lie as hard as Mikey does. He’s a man whose faults continually come flying at him, and it’s astounding to watch him dodge every accusation. Even in the third act when a simple turn on the freeway leads to cataclysmic failure, he finds a sigh of relief. It’s got the breakneck plotting of a Breaking Bad season with only slightly less blood on Mikey’s hands. By the end, it’s the culmination of a trainwreck. Like many tuning in to the news every morning, it’s sometimes more fascinating from a morbid fascination at the toxic disconnect, the idea that reason has long left the chat.
While most characters in this are flawed, not everyone is a villain. Most are simply living an otherwise mundane life, reacting rationally to Mikey’s hair-brained approach to life. He is the chaos agent meant to unsettle a peaceful existence. By the end, he’s done nothing but hurt himself, making any chance of even taking an apology from him difficult. The lack of proper communication reflects a hurdle that only grows more difficult, where even the same language comes with its berths of ambiguity. This isn’t an America symbolized by a grand dystopian future, but one stumbling through narcissists trying to hold onto some glory days that may or may not have existed, to hold onto wealth and power that has been recontextualized. Mikey may be the most annoying man in America, but he’s also one of the most tragic and damning – so disconnected from the world that the only clear answer is to enter Witness Protection and rebuild his backstory to something a tad more tolerable.
Red Rocket may not be the most direct in establishing the political divide that currently faces the country, but it’s the most honest. Certain films have done a better job at aggrandizing administrations and highlighting every way that they’re wrong, but they genuinely don’t feel like they’re rooted in more than diatribes. There is no heart and soul in capturing what it feels like to live in a uniquely uncertain time, where everyone may be more connected yet feel more alone. The internet may not factor much into Baker’s vision, but the way that characters mold situations and starts drama out of otherwise nonsensical situations feels familiar. Mikey is the guy who will not get the hint, who will not leave you alone until he’s got the right answer. You can’t escape from him and, quite honestly, Baker makes sure you don’t forget either. Rex was robbed of many accolades for one of the few performances of 2021 that actually felt like it was saying something greater, challenging cinema in a painfully honest way. It’s an entertaining film that defies boundaries to the point where its protagonist can contain multitudes, serving as a commentary on what is wrong with America as well as forcing many to ask “What do we do to fix it?” There’s no answer given, but truthfully Baker would be dishonest if he even tried to provide that kind of coda to this masterpiece.
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