Red Rock­et – first-look review

Is using a washed-up porn star who cre­ates chaos wher­ev­er he goes as a metaphor for the state of the Amer­i­can nation too on the nose? Maybe – but Sean Bak­er doesn’t exact­ly deal in sub­tly. His work favours bright colours, out­ra­geous dia­logue and more than a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy, and his sev­enth fea­ture, Red Rock­et, is like­ly to gen­er­ate fur­ther impas­sioned respons­es, despite a devi­a­tion in tone from the emo­tion­al pull of Tan­ger­ine and The Flori­da Project.

In the months lead­ing up to the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in 2016, Mikey Davies returns to his home­town of Texas City, Texas (pop­u­la­tion just under 50,000) and to his ex-wife Lexi and her moth­er Lil, who are less than enthu­si­as­tic about the reunion. After some sort of shenani­gans in Los Ange­les where he’s lived for the past 18 years, Mikey is washed up and look­ing for a place to crash. After some nego­ti­a­tion, he man­ages to take up res­i­den­cy on Lexi and Lil’s couch, and sets about try­ing to find a job.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Mikey’s past life as a porn star (going by the name Mikey Saber) is a bar­ri­er to employ­ment. While Mikey isn’t ashamed of his career, his prospec­tive employ­ees all turn him down when he explains what he’s been doing since he left town. Run­ning out of options, he turns to an old friend and starts sell­ing mar­i­jua­na to local skaters, strip­pers and oil work­ers. Soon enough he runs into 17-year-old Rylee (Suzan­na Son), who goes by the name Straw­ber­ry. A mutu­al attrac­tion develops. 

This is where the sex­u­al pol­i­tics of Red Rock get a lit­tle sticky. As charm­ing and affa­ble as Mikey is, he’s also a man in his for­ties who begins a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a teenag­er. Although the age of con­sent is 17 in Texas (“Legal as an eagle!” Mikey exclaims proud­ly to his friend Lon­nie) he does groom Straw­ber­ry, pro­vid­ing her with mar­i­jua­na and encour­ag­ing her to shoot a sex scene with him. 

Mikey sees Straw­ber­ry as his tick­et back to Los Ange­les and the porn world, envi­sion­ing a future where they can take the indus­try by storm. Of course, things aren’t quite that sim­ple; Mikey – who seems to pos­sess what­ev­er the oppo­site of the Midas touch is – is a self­ish, seedy char­ac­ter who has no qualms about fuck­ing oth­er peo­ple (over) to get what he wants. It’s inter­est­ing to see Bak­er cen­tre a pro­tag­o­nist with so few redeem­ing fea­tures, con­sid­er­ing his past films are more bal­anced in terms of the choic­es char­ac­ters make in increas­ing­ly des­per­ate situations. 

But Mikey isn’t just Mikey; he’s Amer­i­ca, stub­born and reck­less and self-assured even when he has no right to be. His hubris is remark­able and fre­quent­ly enter­tain­ing, sold with aplomb by Simon Rex whose nat­ur­al com­ic tal­ent shines through. He may also under­stand a thing or two about the fick­le nature of the enter­tain­ment indus­try, hav­ing worked in porn at the start of his career before becom­ing most­ly known for star­ring in three of the Scary Movie films. He’s a com­pelling motor­mouth lead, talk­ing him­self in and out of trou­ble; a reg­u­lar snake oil sales­man if ever there was one.

Red Rock­et feels a lit­tle lighter in tone than Baker’s pre­vi­ous work, and as such doesn’t quite have the emo­tion­al res­o­nance that we’ve come to expect since his star began to rise. Its two hour run­time also drags con­sid­er­ing there’s rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle pay­off at the end (it may have the same love-it-or-loathe-it response as The Flori­da Project’s Dis­ney­land scene). Still, there are some tru­ly riotous moments, and as a char­ac­ter study on how one man’s awful­ness per­me­ates across every­one he meets, this is fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them. But to keep going, and grow­ing, we need your sup­port. Become a mem­ber today.