I Need A Hero
There’s a lot to love in Red Rocket, but as is always the case in the films of Sean Baker, you’ll have to look further than the main character. Simon Rex plays one of the filmmaker’s greatest antiheros yet – Barry Levitt walks us through the dark corners of this colourful romp.
Mikey Saber is a deeply reprehensible guy, an unabashed narcissist with delusions of grandeur. He’s also funny, loveable, and a man you can’t help but root for: the kind of guy you want to push off a cliff while hoping he has the time of his life on his way down. In Red Rocket, director Sean Baker gives us the most compelling anti-hero of our times: Mikey, played by Simon Rex, is a washed-up porn star who returns to his small Texas hometown in a bid to reclaim his glory.
A lot of directors have great sympathy for their characters, truly caring about the things their characters endure. Baker is an innately empathetic filmmaker, considering every dimension not only of who his characters are, but why they act the way they do.
He’s also fascinated by working-class portraits of underrepresented people hardly ever seen on screen. In Tangerine, Baker’s breakthrough film notorious for being filmed on an iPhone 5S, he follows transgender sex workers with remarkable warmth and care. His follow up, 2017’s The Florida Project tenderly investigates the lives of a six-year-old child and her mother living in a Florida motel as they struggle to make ends meet. It would be easy for Baker to mock his characters on the fringes of society, but he refuses to remove any of his characters’ agency.
It’s hard to hate anyone when everything is filmed with such love and warmth. Baker’s camera has such an affinity for unexpected places, shooting the rundown strip clubs and doughnut shops in Texas City like exquisite historical palaces. In the arid Southern heat, Baker creates beautiful compositions that find colour in unexpected places, making the prickly and complicated world of Red Rocket one you can’t help but be invested in.
To those who don’t know him, Mikey is extraordinary; the kind of guy who lights up the room with his smile and constant (and I do mean constant) talking. He’s quick to compliment, and to joke: just watch the way he speaks to a woman running a yard sale, or how he’s completely down to earth speaking to a group of construction workers he sells weed to, offering synthetic piss (to pass drug testing) to sweeten the deal. People simply can’t resist smiling around him, and are drawn into his inherent magnetism.
But it’s a very different story for those who do know Mikey. He arrives unannounced at his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother Lil’s (Brenda Deiss) house in Texas City. The two women clearly do not want him there, but Mikey plays it like a chess game. He talks and talks and talks, rarely letting the women get a word in, and when they make jabs at him, he’s not confrontational. He lets them slide so he can get what he’s after – a place to stay. While giving a speech, he offers Lil coffee, delicately layering kindness with his endless scheming. It’s subtle but effective, as he eventually wins over Lil and Lexi as he reassures them, constantly selling himself to anyone who will listen, and anyone who doesn’t want to hear it.
He pursues and romances a young woman named Strawberry (Suzanna Son) with what at first seems like a genuine love and desire, but is soon revealed to be for selfish reasons, as he sees her as his ticket for his big return to the adult entertainment industry. The two meet at the Donut Hole (a nod to Baker’s Tangerine, where much of the action unfolds at a Donut Time), and Rex delivers such forceful charisma that makes Strawberry falling head-over-heels for Mikey completely believable.
The relationship between the 17-year-old girl and the much older Mikey is never romanticised. After all, the great romanticists didn’t often write about a quick fuck in the back of a pick-up truck. Baker films their physical scenes in a matter-of-fact manner, largely without flourish, with the exception of a brilliant crash zoom-out when the pair have sex by the water. When the two finally sleep together on an actual bed, Mikey encourages Strawberry to film it – not for sexual gratification or kink, but to convince his lover she’d be a perfect porn star.
It’s a platonic relationship of Mikey’s, however, that actually says the most about him – his friendship with his lanky tower of a neighbour, Lonnie (Ethan Darbone). Mikey befriends Lonnie because he has a car – a considerable upgrade over his own two feet that will allow his work as a drug salesman to vastly improve. Lonnie idolises Mikey, reminiscing about how his friends would get together and watch his and Lexi’s videos.
In return, Mikey shares countless stories. It turns out Mikey’s plans to turn Strawberry into a porn star aren’t new – he did it to Lexi, and multiple other women. He chews people up and spits them out when they’re no longer of use. The way Rex brilliantly delivers Mikey’s lines, you’d think he sacrificed himself to help those women out, painting himself as the patron saint of the adult world. When he discovers Lonnie pretends to be a veteran to earn a quick buck, Rex layers his character’s words with such a palpable disgust, making it clear Mikey has a strict moral code, however warped: grooming and manipulation A-OK, impersonating a vet, not so much.
Mikey’s nadir and the best shot of the film come hand-in-hand towards the end of the film. After causing a devastating car pile-up, Mikey uses his power over Lonnie to get him to take the blame, severing their relationship to save his own skin. While nervously waiting to see if his plan pays off, Rex completely shifts Mikey’s character after the incident, shedding his happy-go-lucky skin in favour of a sullen and sunken demeanour. It works, and he launches back to life, leaving Lil’s house to celebrate his freedom in the backyard, completely uncaring about Lonnie’s plight. Using a phenomenal crash zoom, Baker’s camera launches us from Mikey’s euphoria through the fence to the face of Lonnie’s father, utterly broken over the loss of his son, incensed with anger over Mikey’s insensitivity. It’s Mikey’s ugliest moment that reveals his truest self, but Rex plays off Mikey’s embarrassment with a wave and shrug so pitch-perfect that you’re somehow rooting for him yet again.
Mikey’s wheeling and dealing comes to a head at the end of Red Rocket, where his plans to leave Texas City with Strawberry are disrupted by Lexi taking all of his money, as payback. He walks all the way from their house to Strawberry’s, his possessions in a rubbish bag, wearing the exact same vest and grey jeans he wore upon arriving in Texas City. Mikey stands in front of her house, and a distorted version of NSYNC’s ‘Bye, Bye, Bye’ plays, reflecting his instability – a vast difference from the traditional version of the song we hear in the film’s opening. Baker’s camera closes in on Mikey, still stuck in place, and as he breathes the film cuts to black.
Is Mikey’s life of grooming and manipulation finally coming to an end? Has he realised his love for Strawberry is legitimate, making him want to put down roots? Will he finally face the kind of person he is and put in the work to become better? Or is he going to go up to her door and spin a web of deceit like never before? With anyone else but Simon Rex and Sean Baker, you’d have no doubt that Mikey would continue to be a dirtbag convinced he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Thanks to Rex’s incredible charisma and Baker’s love for his characters, there’s a feeling that maybe, just maybe, he’s ready to evolve, and not destroy another person's life. It’s that very belief in Mikey Saber, the absolute bastard you can’t help but cheer on, the ultimate anti-hero.
Red Rocket is released in UK cinemas on March 11.
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