This is director Richard Kelly's followup to Donnie Darko; if you thought Donnie was an impenetrable, confusing, pretentious mess, then you're really gonna hate this one. It is a dark comedy of the apocalypse, rooted in intense anger over the worst excesses of the Bush administration.
The movie stars Dwayne Johnson (no "The Rock" billing here), Seann William Scott, and Sarah Michelle Gellar; the supporting cast includes (in alphabetical order) Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz (surprisingly good in a small role as a racist LAPD officer), Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Zelda Rubinstein, Wallace Shawn, Kevin Smith, and Justin Timberlake.
The action of Southland Tales begins in the middle of the story; the first three segments of the movie are labeled as chapters 4, 5, and 6. Timberlake's Pilot Abilene -- that's a name, not a job title -- lays out the backstory for us in the first 15 or 20 minutes, which are very heavy on expository narration. It's June of 2008, and WW3 is underway -- the US is fighting in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea. The Republicans have swept into power and imposed restrictions that make the real-life Bush administration look like pikers, culminating in the establishment of USIdent, an agency that controls all communication (including the Internet) and movement of all US citizens within the country.
Johnson plays Boxer Santaros, an action movie star who has, after a brief disappearance, returned to Los Angeles with amnesia in the company of porn star Krysta Now (Gellar). This infuriates Boxer's wife (Mandy Moore), and has the potential to be a huge embarassment for his in-laws; Dad-in-law is the Republican candidate for vice-president and Mom-in-law (Richardson) is in charge of USIdent. Scott plays the dual role of Ronald and Roland Taverner; one's a Los Angeles cop and the other's an Iraq veteran, and their relationship is more complicated than it first seems.
As if this weren't enough, there's a growing left-wing dissident movement -- the Neo-Marxists -- based in Venice Beach; there's a crazed German inventor (Shawn) who's developed a new source of virtually free energy called Fluid Karma, and as a by-product of that process, a hallucinogenic drug of the same name; and there's an apocalyptic screenplay called The Power, written by Boxer and Krysta, the events of which appear to be coming true (the character Boxer is to play in this movie is Jericho Kane, which was the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in End of Days).
To play amnesia and confusion, Johnson resorts to a lot of nervous twitching and hand-wringing; we haven't seen this much jittery finger fidgeting since the sissy sidekicks of 30s comedy. Gellar wouldn't have been my choice to play a porn star, but she certainly throws herself into the role with gusto. The entire cast, in fact, commits to the loopy proceedings with great energy and enthusiasm, but it's still hard to overcome the sense that even they aren't always sure what the hell is going on.
Southland Tales is an overstuffed mess, with some plot lines that don't ever make sense and some that never go anywhere. There are references to the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost (and Eliot-Frost are the Republican presidential ticket), Titanic, Strange Days, Kiss Me Deadly, The Manchurian Candidate, Mulholland Drive, and lord only knows how many other movies. There are some magnificent images, and occasional scenes of remarkable originality. The movie seems destined to join Donnie Darko as a divisive cult classic. I can't say it's a great movie, or even a very good one most of the time, but it's certainly never boring, and you gotta love a movie that gives you the apocalypse in a battle between a giant mega-zeppelin and a levitating ice-cream truck.
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