If you saw Donnie Darko chances are you’re taken with the film’s charming philosophizing about time travel and consequences. Was Donnie Darko a hero? Was he an inevitable glitch in time? The movie opened up conversational doors – and so its writer and director Richard Kelly deserves plenty of credit. Let’s jump forward in time 5 years where we come across another film he’s created dealing with similar issues: Southland Tales. Imagine the mental complexity of Donnie Darko scattered into the wind with the debris falling into a chaotic pattern of entertainment and disarray. That’s Southland Tales.
The ensemble cast of Southland Tales is too vast to even begin to summarize the role each person plays. Some were well suited for this film while others irritated the senses. It was this facet of Southland Tales, the occasional annoying cast member, that made the first half so hard to endure. Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler appear as squawking white trash gangstas whose only purpose is to set up the premise for the remaining 2 hours of the film. Yes, that’s right folks, we got a long one on our hands.
In the very near future a number of strange events occur leading various political groups in the US to push forth a variety of agendas. Some have genuinely well-intentioned agendas as others intend nothing more than to line their own coffers off of the spoils. The plot makes it fairly easy to tell which is which – the complexity comes around 2/3 of the way through the film when the time travel component comes into play. That’s when the already impossibly twisted subplots find themselves spiraling into depths the likes of which may never before have been attempted in a film.
That’s as much as I’ll say about the plot because to say anymore would be a foolish drive at authoring a summary for a films which can’t bear to be summarized. So it goes.
As I’ve mentioned, the first half of the film was a mind blowing train wreck of a catastrophe that the sheer number of cameos in the ensembles cast began to cast serious doubts in my mind as to what all of these fine thespians had seen in the script.
Then – suddenly and without warning – the movie takes a drastic turn towards the entertaining and enjoyable. Justin Timberlake, the disillusioned veteran narrator explains the government testing he underwent and busts out with a musical number. That’s right. A musical number in the middle of a movie mindfuck. That won’t me up like no other film intermission ever could. As he lip syncs to “All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers with a troupe of women dancing around him I couldn’t decide if the song choice was terribly clichéd or brilliant for its obvious clichéd implications. After all, when an ex-soldier narrator sings “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” what can an audience do but smile and hum along? Frankly, for that moment alone I’m glad I resisted the urge to shut off the movie because from there on out Richard Kelly’s vision is so grandiose and amazing/ridiculous that I’m not sure, even as I write this, how I really feel about the movie.
As the movie takes off the time traveling conundrum begins to take effect and the story begins its tailspin towards the inevitable and odd conclusion. At this point, I’ll notify you that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays one of the many main characters. His acting is superb for the screwed up movie that this is and he glides through the mind-bending scenes with effortless ease.
It’s a rare movie that can evoke such a strong reaction of hatred and yet wonderment from an audience. And because of this my only words for the reader are: watch it all the way through. If you’re like me the first half will be a torrential annoyance only to pay-off with the rather beautifully rendered ending.
God, I just don’t know what to say here. When the film started, the soundtrack arranged by Moby intentionally resonates with Vangelis’s Blade Runner intro causing me to think: is this the next great Sci Fi epic? It’s not and it is. It’s such a mish mash of cultural representations and failings that it astounds delights, enrages and disappoints with every passing minute. Richard Kelly could certainly have produced a more uniform film with less collateral smattering of obnoxious ensemble characters – but would the end result have been so stunning and visceral?
I give Southland Tales a mediocre score for the following reason. For some of you this 5 will be a 10. You’ll think I was a blathering fool for not giving this film a full blast of positive reinforcement. Others will criticize me for reading too far into a horribly constructed film by a writer and director whose best days are behind him and involve a man in a bunny suit. So there it is – 5. See Southland Tales for yourself but remember at least watch through Timberlake’s lip sync number it gets better from there on out.
On the other hand - having just watched it again, I realize how far of a departure it is from Donnie Darko. While I concede that a Director/Writer can't make the same film over and over again that doesn't excuse a severe drop in quality. Even if it still offers a few nuggets of social criticism, the jumbled mass of garbage these nuggets are embedded in is a truly painful sight to behold.
"Southland Tales" opens November 9, 2007 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi. Written and directed by Richard Kelly. Starring Amy Poehler, Christopher Lambert, Dwayne Johnson, Janeane Garofalo, John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Smith, Ling Bai, Mandy Moore, Miranda Richardson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean William Scott, Cheri Oteri.
