Southland Tales

Directed by: Richard Kelly

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar

Synopsis (Part 1)

The book of revelations as interpereted by Richard Kelly and set in an alternate universe. Which begs the question; "Would the Rapture occur in all worlds simultaneously or at different times?" Ok, that's my question not the movie's. (also see below)

Donnie Darko was the teen film that I would have loved to have seen in my teens. It had a wonderfully convoluted plot, quantum mechanics, and music that artfully brought out the emotion in scenes. The scene of the school underpinned by Tears For Fears' Head Over Heels was class. Instead, the movie worked as nostalgic counterpoint to the movie I used to watch in the 80s that dealt with teenage angst; Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Lost Boys.

So, when I heard that Richard Kelly was to make a grand movie based on a graphic novel and starring The Rock and SMG I was interested.

Then the presentation at Cannes happened and I lost all interest.

I'll confess to having watched Southland Tales in two parts. The first ran to 1 hour, 17 minutes. I managed to get through the second part. The parallel with David Lynch's Inland Empire is deliberate. Whereas, Lynch appears to be making a movie that only he understands and just hopes that enough people are interested to watch it, Kelly has made a movie that is part of a lucid experience that he expects a core audience to understand. It's a cult movie in every sense of the word because the viewer is expected to read chapters 1-3 in a pricey graphic novel. I wasn't prepared to do that. I get the whole interactive thing that The Matrix was trying to do, especially with Reloaded; read the graphic novel, watch the animated series, play the Enter the Matrix game to get all the good stuff and make perfect sense of the saga.

With Southland Tales I can't imagine there being much clarity after reading the graphic novel chapters. But, after doing some net reasearch it appears that the answers are out there. Will you care? Probably not.

Synopsis (Part 2)

California - the Southlands is the focus of a political and environmental disaster that is leading to the end of the world during a mix of comedy, drama, dystopian science fiction, and modern music. After a nuclear attack wipes out part of the state of Texas in 2005, America becomes a virtual police state, with the government surveilling the population. A German firm has found a way to generate energy using tidal forces, but both public and private concerns are desperate to prevent the new technology from being introduced in the gasoline-starved United States. A Marxist underground group is determined to stop the the federal government's Big Bother organisation "US-Ident" through violent revolution. Throughout this chaos, we follow a number of characters. Boxer Santaros is a famous action movie star. He's trying to secure financing for a new project, but reality keeps mirroring the events in his script as he struggles to hold on to his identity following a bout with amnesia. Krysta Now is an adult film star who has capitalised on her infamy by hosting a liberal chat show. Roland Taverner is an L.A. police officer who has a mysterious twin brother. His struggles to track down this brother could mean the end of the world or a new beginning. Thanks to "TheGuyInThePjs" from the imdb page for the help with producing a more coherent plot outline.

Did the movie make any sense? Well, it kind of did. In the same way that David Lynch's Mulholland Drive did. I had an idea of what the director was trying to achieve. On the plus side was the music. I like Moby's somewhat erratic output. For this film he used his trademark sound that we're used to hearing in countless adverts. If this wasn't intentional, it fits perfectly. The use of The Pixies Wave of Mutilation was superb as was the Killer's track "All These Things I have Done" (mimed by Justin Timberlake during a fever dream straight out of The Big Lebowski).

The acting was faultless. Ever since I saw The Scorpion King, I've thought that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has had great comedy and action timing. Richard Kelly gets the best of this timing out of Johnson. Sarah Michelle Gellar is miles from the part that made her famous. Not once did I expect her to start stabbing people with bits of wood. Sean William Scott comes into his own here, too. His previous effort with Mr Johnson; Welcome to the Jungle as it was called in the UK, was dire thanks to a mundane and irritating script. Scott, in this movie, shows how well he can play a straight role in comic situations.

The look of the film; a cross between Brazil (in the US-ident offices) and The Doors (California has a certain 60s/70s vibe) is well done. The CGI effects work well also.

Most of the film is difficult to follow, so most will switch off before the last half an hour. This is a pity because it becomes a lot clearer towards the end and more satisfying. What does spoil it is one scene between a female character and Boxer Santaros. She stops him on a beach and says that she will kill herself if Santaros doesn't allow her to give him a BJ. I'm not a prude but it just seemed so out of place. I must have missed whatever siginificance this held, if any. The movie suffers from a lack of cohesion possibly from what has been trimmed to give it a more realistic timescale. Given the reaction to the film it is a shame they bothered.

What I felt most at the end was disappointment. It was disappointing that this experiment ultimately failed. It could have been so much better.

5/10 (Review by Wayfarer)