'Red Rocket' is a film by director Sean Baker, who made one of my favorite films of a couple of years back 'The Florida Project'. Like that film, 'Red Rocket' is about people living on the margins, which makes Baker something of an American equivalent of the English filmmaker Mike Leigh.
Our lead character is "Mikey Saber" (Simon Rex) a has been pornstar who returns to his hometown on the Texas gulf course, presumably to reconcile with his estranged wife (Bree Elrod) but princably because he can't think of anything else to do. Effectively unemployable on account of his past line of work, Mikey becomes a drug dealer, another of his previous professions. Mikey is pretty good at this job, he now has a strong cash flow, his wife's coming around, he even has the admiring friendship and occasional free chauffer serives of his neighbor Ethan Darbone.
However, Mikey becomes smitten with the 17 year old redhead (Suzanna Son) who works the counter at the donut shop where he does much of his dealing. He charms her and slowly works to open her to the idea of doing porn, thinking this young beauty might be his ticket back to the adult film industry. Mikey is not honest with the girl, nicknamed "Strawberry" about his true circumstances, but he's not really honest with anybody, a perpetual fiber and exagertor. Mikey is living multiple lives and has a number of balls (schemes) in the air. He is simply not smart enough to pull all this off, so as the movie goes on you keep waiting to see which shoes will drop and drop they will.
Made for around a million dollars and featuring a mix of professional actors and locals, this a grungy film about the displaced and the underclass. Set in the summer of 2016 against the backdrop of the presidential election, 'Red Rocket' is a subtlety rumative piece, almost a kind of folk filmmaking. These are the kinds of characters you don't see in film that often and there is something really true about them. ***
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