Mikey might be the first character who pops up when you think back on it, but you will also remember other faces and details: the poignant look of dumb, hangdog loyalty in Lonnie’s eyes the oil riggers who line up to buy doughnuts and, eventually, some of Mikey’s weed the quiet but unmistakable mother-daughter intimacy between Lexi and Lil. “Red Rocket” is both a laser-focused character study and a scrappy, scrupulously observed portrait of a tight-knit community. You also wonder how the other characters - including Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), the friendly sad-sack who lives next door, and Leondria and her band of enforcers - will ultimately deal with this homegrown interloper.
She’s not above using him as much as he uses her, and as their breezy, queasy relationship plays out - between nighttime trysts in her pickup truck and weekend getaways that leave Lexi increasingly suspicious - you wonder how it’s all going to end, other than badly. However sweet and naive, she’s more wily than she lets on, and the voraciousness of her own sexual appetite takes even Mikey by surprise. When Mikey wanders into a doughnut store one day and meets a red-haired 17-year-old cashier called Strawberry, a name equally suited to pastries and smut, he thinks he’s found his ticket back to California - at which point “Red Rocket” becomes a disquietingly clear-eyed portrait of predatory grooming in action.īut Strawberry, winningly played by the gifted newcomer Suzanna Son, isn’t quite the patsy Mikey assumes. Some of the movie’s more pointed conversations broach the dubious sexual politics of the porn industry, and the story’s most important development offers a pointed corrective to it.
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Here, as in his independent features like “Starlet,” “Tangerine” and, supremely, “The Florida Project,” he finds terrific actors - and natural storytellers - in places where Hollywood and even indie movie cameras rarely deign to tread.Īnd as in those earlier movies, he and his regular co-writer, Chris Bergoch, shine a matter-of-fact light on the realities of American sex work while they have no use for judgment, they do not rule out the possibilities of humor, horror and outrage. Her presence in “Red Rocket,” playing a fictional character with an unfakable good-humored grit, is perfectly illustrative of Baker’s method. It took me a beat to remember where I’d seen the remarkable Hill before: in Roberto Minervini’s powerful 2019 documentary, “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?,” which illuminated her experiences as a bar owner, a recovering addict and a forceful advocate for the Black women and men in her fast-gentrifying New Orleans neighborhood. Broke, desperate, dumb as a stump and persistent as hell, Mikey is bad news through and through.
Lexi lives with her mom, Lil (Brenda Deiss), and they greet him as enthusiastically as they would a termite reinfestation. But despite his saber-esque endowment and a raft of porn-industry prizes, Mikey’s back in town, crashing once more with Lexi (Bree Elrod), the wife and former co-star he ditched some time ago. But he’s also returning to something: This Gulf Coast port city is where he grew up, years before he headed off to Los Angeles to pursue his calling as an adult entertainer. Mikey seems to be on the run the moment we meet him, riding a bus that will drop him off amid the depopulated streets and smoke-belching oil refineries of Texas City. Getting away with things, much like getting off, has long been one of this great American hustler’s favorite pastimes. But then, there may be no real difference. But he’s smiling here for a very different, singularly appalling reason, and it’s worth discovering for yourself suffice to say it has less to do with pleasure than relief. It’s a look we know well by this point: Mikey is a porn star, or at least he was one until recently. The money shot in “Red Rocket,” Sean Baker’s glorious gutter dive of a movie, is of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) joyously riding his bicycle, his seamily handsome face twisted into a smile of near-sexual bliss. Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials.
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