When he meets doe-eyed red-head Strawberry at a local donut place, he thinks he can make her a star – and forge his own path back west. ![]() What Lexi and her mother don’t understand is that their home is just a stepping stone for Mikey, who wants to return to the glory of America’s multi-billion-dollar porn industry and the 20 million-plus Pornhub hits he amassed during a decade-long career. Mikey’s gruelling bus journey and black eye rightly perturb estranged ex Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her senior citizen mother, but Mikey’s LA-practiced charm and unrivalled skills in the bedroom soon endear him once again to Lexi. Simon Rex stars as Mikey Saber, a has-been porn star so down on his luck he’s forced to return to Texas City, east Texas, to move in with his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law. ![]() The experiment succeeds, even if its light tone would have us ruing the jet-black drama Baker has mastered in previous work. His latest film, which is Baker’s breeziest and funniest movie yet, has plenty of beautifully shot colour to wow audiences with, while staying close to the moral greys he has always fixated on. It might be a hard place to live but Baker shows how a resilient community pulling together can create a supportive and safe environment abounding with love.Perhaps even more so than The Florida Project, Sean Baker’s financial and ideological investment in celluloid film pays off in Red Rocket. These buildings, typically thought to be ugly, are given washes of warm orange in the evening glow, and modest back yards are bathed in the brilliant blue of daytime. (Strawberry is played confidently by newcomer Suzanna Son, who displays how the damage of abusive behaviour can bleed through the generations.)īaker filmed everything on a $1million budget during the pandemic with a crew of 10, but even with a small budget – or perhaps because of – the environments feel incredibly rich. Characters are woken by loudhailer announcements, and cargo trains crawling past block out conversation where Mikey’s teen love interest, Strawberry, works. Visually, they feel like another enemy, looming uncomfortably large in the frame. The oppressive factories that line the horizon of this small workers’ town loom over the locals. Red Rocket was shot on location in the US in Texas City, Galveston and the Port Arthur area (Photo: Universal) A jury in Perth is discharged after a judge aborts the trial of seven men accused of involvement in one of Australias biggest methamphetamine seizures. Rex shows how men like Mikey’s charming facade can slip in an instant, resorting to physical power to control the women in his life, an act that sometimes boils over into violence. ![]() He plays Mikey as likeable because ultimately that’s what he is – pretending to be nice is how bad people get away with bad actions. Simon Rex’s case is reminiscent of Mark Wahlberg’s in Boogie Nights (1997), with which Paul Thomas Anderson made a name for himself and gave the actor the best reviews of his career. Rex is magnetic as charismatic bastard Mikey, totally getting the mindset of the type of man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. But Baker really wanted him to star in Red Rocket – and thank goodness he did. Put politely, Baker has a contemporaneity that could be described as at odds with Rex’s career. After wheedling his way onto his estranged wife’s couch and into a gig as a small-time drug dealer, Saber tries to improvise a way back into the business with the help of his new teenage lover.
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