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All Movie Info
Starring:
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Holmes Osborne, Will Sasso, Miranda Richardson, Jon Lovitz, Kevin Smith, Wallace Shawn, Beth Grant, Wood Harris, John Larroquette, Nora Dunn, Jill Ritchie, Lisa K. Wyatt, Amy Poehler, Justin Timberlake, Lou Taylor Pucci, Robin Wilson, Curtis Armstrong, Janeane Garofalo, Katherine Kendall, Christopher Lambert, Zelda Rubinstein, Sab Shimono, Chad Fernandez, Michael Gilden, David McDivitt, Robert Merrill, A.J. Presley, Jennifer Amy, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Aliane Baquerot, Todd Berger, Ashleigh Boiros, Bai Ling, Aaron Haedt, Carlos Amezcua, Robert Benz, Dave Carlin, Rebekah Del Rio, Aaron Dillar, Shari Dunn, Michele Durrett, Jace Dwinell, John Falcone, Leila Feinstein, Jaret Gardiner, Shannon Holmes, Katarina Hyde, Gianna Luchini, Raymond Mansfield, Abbey McBride, Mike Nielsen, Nathan Pitkanen, Brenda Powell, Dee Austin Robertson, Kevin Robertson, Phil Sternberg, Rick Crawford, Nicholas J. Giordano, Aaron Haedt, Dave Rhodes, Joe Campana, Jon Falcone, Jinah Kim
Directed By:
Richard Kelly
Written By:
Richard Kelly
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Southland Tales (2007)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
November 24th, 2007
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Richard Kelly made quite a debut with Donnie Darko, a strange and beguiling movie that made a star out of Jake Gyllenhaal, at least in the arthouse circuit, following his more mainstream appearance in October Sky. Now Kelly returns with 'Southland Tales', which may be the most confounding film of the year, overstuffed with dozens of subplots that sometimes connect to one another, but not always, and a huge collection of characters, major and minor, all set in the near future (2008), after nuclear explosions have destroyed the Texas cities of Abilene and El Paso. WWIII is currently being waged, and there is an oil shortage, so basically, the world is reaching its end, and we are dealing with a soon-to-be post-apocalyptic environment. Much of the United States is still intact, but maybe not for long, and the government has extended its power for the sake of national security, turning into a real Big Brother apparatus, even monitoring more or less all of cyberspace, which is what China does now, so it can track its citizens' online activities.
Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a The Rock) is a movie star who is found in the middle of the desert with amnesia. Mandy Moore is his wife Madeleine, whose father is a senator hoping to be president. More directly relevant is Krysta (Gellar), a former porn star, who now wants to have a more respectable career, and has written a screenplay that will hopefully get turned into a successful feature. There is a company named Treer, owned by Baron von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn), which is seeking to take over and radically transform the American transportation system. There is an Iraqi war vet whose last name is Abilene (Justin Timberlake), and a group of crazy anarchists, one of whom is played by Cheri Oteri. Jon Lovitz drops his comic persona to become Bart Bookman, a sleazy racist cop. And Seann William Scott is Roland Taverner, a police officer, whose twin brother Ronald (also Scott) is scheming against him, and stealing his identity. None of this really makes sense, and I am not sure it is supposed to. Trying to keep track of everything is useless, it is an absolute narrative mess, scatterbrained and inconsistent, with only a few characters interesting enough to follow with any degree of attentiveness. Boxer is one of them, Krysta is another, and the movie wisely allots them more time than most anyone else.
Kelly has written a lot of dense dialogue with philosophical undertones, which makes it sound more intelligent than it really is. I don't feel that it has much substance, and that the actors are simply delivering their lines without much conviction. You have bizarre casting choices, The Rock being an example, though his performance is actually not that bad, and he plays it seriously, even choosing to retain his real name rather than this wrestling moniker. Gellar is good, and often quite funny. Wallace Shawn is terrific. Timberlake is weak; he is slowly losing any promise he displayed in Alpha Dog (his work in Black Snake Moan was not particularly effective, in my view). Lovitz and Scott leave impressions in atypical roles; Scott previously worked with The Rock in the action flick The Rundown, and so they are reunited in something very different. Kelly was inspired apparently by Robert Altman, Terry Gilliam, and also a bit by David Lynch, in his use of a massive ensemble cast, his plot structure, and his visual style, which is inventive, though also pretentious and self-indulgent. 'Southland Tales' is confusing, obnoxious, and frustrating, but unique, it is indeed unlike anything else currently available in theaters. If you thought Donnie Darko was hard to follow, try this on for size.
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