Southland Tales

Year: 2006
Genre: Sci-Fi Drama
Directed: Richard Kelly
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Marah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Bai Ling, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Kevin Smith, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poehler, Curtis Armstrong, Janeane Garofalo
Production: Universal Pictures

Many relatively young directors have fallen into the Hollywood trap as of late. It's become a sadly common pattern: a new filmmaker makes a decent film with a comparatively small budget and wouldn't you know, they're picked up to do the new Spider-Man film. Coaxed into the studio fold by big paychecks and "full studio support," many of these poor talents are attached to long gestating franchise projects that have already been tinkered with by executive producers, marketing departments and countless script doctors. By the time they get on-board, their biggest challenge isn't story-boarding the perfect shot or translating the themes of the script to the screen, but quarterbacking everyone's escalating expectations. It's a shame too, because when a project fails, no one blames the marketing team or the stars, or the studio executives; they blame the director.

From top left: Colin Trevorrow, David Ayer, Marc Webb, Josh Trank

Some filmmakers have managed to escape the larger studio system and despite the lack of financial support, forged some very successful careers. Richard Kelly is sadly not one of those filmmakers. Since the pop-cult resilience of Donnie Darko (2001) made his name synonymous with metaphysical science-fiction, the man has been trying to recreate that magic for years, with some pretty kooky concepts to no avail. While The Box (2009) has its weird charm, Southland Tales has everything Kelly has done beat by sheer ambition. It's big, it's dense and it's a huge f***king mess. Like Jupiter Ascending (2014), knocked up at the senior prom, kind of mess. A science-fiction epic that has the temerity to be as dour and self-righteous as a sermon yet as patently ridiculous as a KFC out of chicken.

Please, let there be chicken!

Southland Tales takes place in an alternative reality where citizens of the United States are under constant surveillance and a nuclear disaster some years ago has left much of the world in an ebbing state of anarchy and uncertainty. To prevent energy shortages, a company called Treer created a massive power plant they call Fluid Karma off the coast of L.A., which harnesses the natural ocean currents to provide safe and environmentally friendly energy. Problem is, this method of creating energy also slows down the rotation of the earth and rips holes into the fabric of space time...yeah, you kinda just have to go with it.

Dafaq?!

Instead of opting for a straightforward story, Southland attempts a hyper-link narrative, with multiple characters interweaving themselves into each other stories. Instead of resembling the elegance of the Higgs Field however, this narrative ploy makes the movie look like a knot of undecipherable nuttiness. Major characters include Miranda Richardson as a porn director and part-time revolutionary, Sarah Michelle Gellar as an adult film star, Justin Timberlake as an Iraq War veteran and Seann William Scott who plays two-to-four versions of cop and soldier twins who also have alternative dimension counterparts. Yet out of all the confusing sub-stories and awkward loopty-loops that this movie makes, the image of Kevin Smith playing a paraplegic war vet, is by all accounts the weirdest thing about this movie.

With so many plates wobbling precariously in the air, you'd think the ensemble cast would at least try to keep a veneer of professionalism. Yet at best, half of the ensemble seems invested in this film and not the ones you'd expect. Wallace Shawn does a commendable job as Fluid Karma inventor Baron von Westphalen (oh I see what you did there). Likewise John Larroquette's adviser to a drab California senator seems completely out of another movie. Yet for every understated performance there's a scenery-chewing C-list comedian aggressively sabotaging the entire ordeal by playing to the cheap seats. I'm looking at you Cheri Oteri, Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Amy Poehler!

Still love this man

Then there's Dwayne Johnson whose campy portrayal of an amnesic action star is an unintentional triumph amid performances both turgid and wacky. Every scene he's in has the light humorous touch of a Stephen Colbert comedy bit, complete with a meta lack of self-awareness. He's like a bright orange traffic cone in the middle of a pot-holed street; a peacock amid sparrows; a jester amid an execution. If he looked directly at the camera and winked knowingly, I would have checked-off Southland Tales as one big elaborate performance piece worthy of a gander.

I can be a serious actor, honest!

Unfortunately he never does. Regrettably there are far more scenes where we don't see what The Rock is cooking; instead following the guy from American Pie (1999) through Marxist revolutionaries, Tinseltown grotesqueness, and political and corporate corruption. As a protagonist/s of sorts, Seann William Scott looks so out of his depth that the audience feels almost embarrassed for him. I'm sure Scott is a nice person, and perhaps one day we'll see his range, but with a career of playing childish doofuses, seeing him in this abstract ode to wrongheaded pretension is just sad.

In fact, this entire debacle is just sad; especially given that if you cock your head and squint, you can kind of see what Richard Kelly was going for. A few parts David Lynch, a dollop of Russ Meyer, a few casual insights from Tesla, Einstein and Feynman. Add in Justin Timberlake lip-synching The Killers and smear it with a bucket of blood, spit and bile. That's Southland Tales in a nutshell; a $12 million angry suicide note telling Hollywood if you try to work with me again, I'll be taking other careers down with me. In this case, there's no one to blame but the director.

Final Grade: F