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SOUTHLAND TALES
Written & Directed by Richard Kelly.
Produced by, Bo Hyde, Sean McKittrick, Kendall Morgan & Matthew Rhodes.
Director of Photography by Steven Poster.
Edited by Sam Bauer.
Music by Moby.
Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
USA. 144 min. Rated R.
With Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Wallace Shawn, Miranda Richardson, Christopher Lambert, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Michele Durrett, Amy Poehler & Kevin Smith.

Oh, what a cult following and current events will do to a filmmaker who wants to take risks. Donnie Darko, which was a box-office flop when first released, became a kind of zeitgeist for disaffected youth who connected to the title character, a loner kid who foresees the end of the world. The 2001 film put its writer/director, Richard Kelly, on the map. Six years later, he follows it with Southland Tales, over a year after its disastrous work-in-progress screening at Cannes, which ran 20 or so minutes longer than the current cut…and damn it all if I can try and describe the whole plot in the space of this review.

It’s the kind of film that many directors wouldn’t dare to attempt: a dystopian take of America in a socio-political crisis during the 2008 Fourth of July holiday, with more nuttiness than a foot-long candy bar. There are several plot strands, so here it goes: a nuclear attack wipes out part of Texas; the neocons take control of the country, pushing fear to the limit and transforming the country into a complete police state where corporations have far more control than politicians; oil is in very short supply; and underground bands of rebels called neo-Marxists (which, as the narration explains, was founded originally by Karl Marx) incite rebellion. And, of course, television is the constant droning Big Brother presence controlled by a government bureau. That’s not to mention the constant terror threats.

Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), a famous actor, winds up in the desert with his memory erased and somehow makes it back to Los Angeles where he writes a screenplay for “an epic Los Angeles crime saga,” hooks up with adult film star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and goes along with cop Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) to do research for the project. Meanwhile, an industrialist (Wallace Shawn with the most deranged haircut of his career) has a new system waiting to be unveiled, Liquid Karma, which could replace oil as an energy source. The neo-Marxists (led by Nora Dunn and Cheri Oteri) and the Big Brother government have Boxer equally on each other’s radars, the former to gain his support for a slew of causes, the latter to reintegrate him back into what he was before his amnesia. Did I mention Justin Timberlake as an ex-Iraq War veteran and the omniscient, overbearing narrator hanging on a gunner platform overlooking Venice Beach?

This might sound by itself like a lot to take in, but that’s barely half of it. There’s also time travel and inter-dimensional warps, all leading towards what will probably be the end of the world. No doubt ambitious, the film’s all too much to swallow. Kelly populates his film with actors from Saturday Night Live (Jon Lovitz, Oteri, and Amy Poehler) and oddball choices (Shawn plus an unrecognizable Kevin Smith as an old computer geek), which seem to indicate satire. And it is, in parts. But it’s also a sincere drama, rambling science fiction, and, once or twice, even a musical.

In bits and pieces, it’s actually close to brilliant, if at least unlikely entertaining, as was also the case with Donnie Darko. But as a whole, nothing ever jells; the narrative clunks along as Boxer nervously taps his fingers not knowing who he is and Scott’s cop ends up being two people who, not to spoil too much, shouldn’t ever shake hands. Throw in a political agenda that tries to tie matters to the present (footage of Bush giving a speech), as well as references to Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, and you might get an idea of what Southland Tales has in store. Whatever was cut since the Cannes screening isn’t clear – it doesn’t seem that the trims made it coherent.

You know you’re in trouble when a film is broken up in parts IV, V, and VI, and the first three chapters of backstory are in graphic novels. For all the moments and scenes that stand out – like a hallucinating Timberlake’s musical number or Gellar’s amusing performance as a thinking-person’s porn mogul – it simply never reaches to the heights that Kelly so wants to reach. His fans will undoubtedly see it and may even love it. More power to them. Others, be at risk: this is the one movie that includes the line “I’m a pimp…and pimps don’t commit suicide,” said with a straight face. Jack Gattanella
November 14, 2007