User reviews

...after you have landed an indie hit? If you had a gazillion of incoherent opinions about the world and your homeland? If you are mad, confused and overwhelmed about/by the politics and the society? If you have watched too many movies and wanted to integrate your influences all over the place at any sacrifice? If you wanna sell your -in the core- interesting, exciting, weird but overall half-baked ideas that were maybe influenced by some bizarre dreams you had or just popped into your mind after you had too much LSD? Well, you might go and shoot something like Southland Tales. Of course everyone has his own opinion and no one should judge artistic devices and expression since it's entirely subjective and there are no rules to it. So arguing over tastes and opinions is really senseless. But having read many reviews mentioning "real genius" and "a masterpiece", I would like to respectfully disagree. To me it felt like a missed shot at achieving something big, something which was supposed to be an avant-garde and unprecedented work so it would become a cult movie. And when it got horribly out of control, all you can do is trying to patch the whole thing up and sell it so that the intented result was exactly this: "a profound sci-fi satire, an artistic mindfuck".

Too many wildy combinated ingredients doesn't make the soup taste any better. Intention and execution are really two different pairs of shoes.

The real failure of this film isn't that it's overcomplicated in terms of plot. It is definitely overloaded with plots and subplots, characters, and various allusions to the arts. Its downfall is that it uses its central theme of media criticism as an excuse not to present its ideas coherently -- it critiques an incoherent form in an incoherent way. Pot Kettle Black.

The primary thing that keeps the film from succeeding as a whole is its constant shifts in tone. While the filmmakers might argue that they are aping/satirizing the way we get information through the media, it makes for a rotten experience at the cinema. Some scenes are sketch comedy, some are ponderous (in a good sense), there is a bit of action and bit of fun with setting of the film. Without a truly riveting lead character or other weighted focus point it falls apart -- really by the conclusion of the film it's just white noise.

The casting is meant to be part of the media critique, but it's works against the film to keep thinking, 'hey -- that's the guy from Revenge of the Nerds and Moonlighting again', and keeps you distracted from the plot and characters' relationship to the plot. When thinking of this aspect of the film AFTER viewing it's a straightforward idea -- hey the filmmakers are saying that the government is using entertainment to keep us from following the real news, man! But during the actual experience of watching the film, the casting starts one thinking of Mars Attacks or dare I say it, Cannonball Run......

The lighting was very flat, which I assume again is part of the 'fast food media' critique - but ugly is still ugly. Especially considering Donnie Darko I was expecting something worth looking at visually. There are some big IDEAS presented visually, but they are not visually interesting in a formal sense. There has to be SOMETHING for the audience to hang its hat on beyond an idea. Cinema is a sensate experience, not merely an intellectual one.

I look forward to reading about this someday in Scott Tobias's "My Year Of Flops - Redux" on the Onion AV Club....

Well, what is there to say that hasn't been said, and so why am I saying anything at all? I find it rude to require viewers to read prequel materials to even begin to understand a story they are investing time in. Also, the writing was a huge disappointment after Donnie Darko. I stuck with it, but it was just awful. this is the sort of thing that appeals to folks who want to feel like they are special because they "get it". This makes them feel like they understand an artistic effort in some way that less intelligent people aren't capable of. In fact, they are just willing to waste time buying into the "artist's" cult of personality.I should know, I bought into Donnie Darko in this same way. To me, the big difference is that Donnie Darko stood entirely on it's own as a very good piece of entertainment. It was not nearly so self indulgent and was enjoyable with no knowledge other than what was presented in the film. Finding the back story just added to a more thorough understanding and enjoyment of the film.

With Southland Tales I was confused a great deal of the time. I was not really able to enjoy the culture bashing due to the really bad dialog and inability to connect many elements of the story. So, if you like bad dialog, poorly developed characters (more like caricatures), a screwed up story that makes no sense without reading the prequel and a badly directed and edited film, watch this, or maybe The Box (another Kelly debacle). Enjoy!

I give the film a 3 out of 10 because it does have some sharp moments where some sort of vision glimmers through. I particularly enjoyed watching Jon Lovitz shattering type. And it's good to see Nora Dunn and Will Sasso on the big screen.

But for the most part, this feels like the world's most expensive B-movie. It has a lot of scenes, most of which are professionally lit and well-composed through the camera, and they feature actors reading lines. And that's all there is - the parts don't add up to a whole.

I like weirdness and I like apocalyptic themes. I like social/political reflection and cinematic chaos. I don't require a movie to present a nice, tidy narrative arc. I do, however want to be drawn in, I want to believe at some level in what's happening on screen. And this movie didn't do that for me. None of these scenes are ever going to happen. They don't depict, or reflect on, a world in which we live. They're supposed to, but like a badly-drawn portrait, the resemblance isn't quite there. All I see is a bad rendering.

I honestly can't understand where all the positive hype for this movie is coming from. I suspect a case of the emperor's new clothes. If you genuinely enjoyed this film, I say the more power to you. Having made it to the end, I think it's a dud.

What the hell did I just watch??? I'm so confused. So many random ideas pilled into one big movie about America with some fourth dimension stuff. I'm big fan of Donnie Darko but this is just too much. The acting is horrible, the dialogue is even worse (there are so many sex jokes that aren't funny at all). Justin Timberlake's character is just sitting in the middle of the sea with the gun lol, also The Killer's song sequence was the most random thing in this chaotic movie. Hot mess.

I've always thought Donnie Darko was overrated, but the good bits outweighed the bad. What the film did show, however, was that writer/director Richard Kelley was bursting with ideas and perhaps needed a little more time to develop and think about them. There were too many ideas in Donnie Darko, with the result that there were some interesting avenues that weren't properly and completely developed because they were competing for screen time with too many little things that Kelley wanted to throw in there. However, the film succeeded - mostly because at its heart was an interesting and different take on your standard "teen angst" drama.

Sadly this film suggests that Donnie Darko was a bit of serendipity and Kelley is likely never to be given as much creative control over a major film project for a long, long time.

Southland Tales is Kelley unbound - and like Tarantino unbound it is probably something you either love or you hate. For me, this film missed every target because it was bloated and poorly executed.

It's very hard to give much of an idea of story. The film opens with an excruciatingly long voice-over exposition where we are introduced to many characters in quick succession, and given a back story for them all. Maybe it would make a lot more sense if you've read the introductory graphic novels but for me, the fact that the film doesn't stand on its own is a big negative. Here's just a taste: It's LA 2008. After terrorist nuclear attacks in Texas in 2005, America is in a heightened state of panic. Boxer Santaro (The Rock), a popular action actor, mysteriously goes missing, then turns up in Los Angeles with amnesia, where he hooks up with ambitious porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Krysta's plans for global marketing domination involve a reality show, a chat show, an album, a soft drink, and a far-out screenplay she has written with Boxer about a massive sci-fi conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, a bunch of neo-Marxists enlist an unaware Boxer, along with policeman Roland Taverner (Sean William Scott) in an elaborate plot to destabilise the government. Add a massive offshore power station that runs on wave energy, a new fuel/drug called Liquid Karma, an arms dealer in an ice cream van (Christopher Lambert), a drug-dealing ex-serviceman who sits atop Santa Monica pier in a gun turret providing a deadpan Greek Chorus narration (Justin Timberlake), and a David Lynch-type support cast of dwarfs, outrageously costumed extras and assorted freaks, and you have about half of the setup of this film.

As the above indicates, the film is packed with concepts and over-the-top characters and has many potential elements that would be the makings of a good satire. In the hands of someone skillful, it might come off - if they perhaps threw out 2/3 of the characters and ideas. (I'm thinking you would end up with something like the delightful Repo Man.) But clearly Kelley doesn't have the skill and we are left with a massive story that, for all its detail, is surprisingly slowmoving and unengaging.

The story is not completely incoherent but doesn't really go anywhere and the potential for some serious social satire about American paranoia post-9/11 is lost as Kelley piles on the in-jokes and cultural references. This film is chock full of them, but there are just way too many which come and go too quickly to make any impact. And they only serve to distract from any central themes and dull their point.

As for the acting - I really don't know what to say. A glimpse at the cast mentioned above shows that Kelley has gone for gimmick casting on a massive scale and the film is full of cultural icons who play characters who are massive stereotypes. For the most part, they play them extremely badly and many of the more dramatic scenes are over-the-top melodrama cranked to the max hammed up by the characters. I think this was intentional - but for me it doesn't work as satire because satire needs more than just pointing out the weaknesses of something that is weak. Lameness magnified is not ultra-clever, it's ultra-lame. And Kelley doesn't have anything particularly clever to say about the stereotypes he is attempting to send up. There are too many characters, and none of them has any depth or generates much interest.

Perhaps the greatest problem is that Kelley shows no ability to use the fundamental tools of cinema to take us on a journey. That's a shame because Donnie Darko suggested that, with maturity and guidance, Kelley might turn into a very smart director. But here Kelley uses certain tricks, effects and techniques just "because he can". He can't build suspense, he can't build excitement, he can't make us feel anything for his characters. Potentially beautiful steadicam work is wasted because Kelley has no underlying point to it. No doubt his defenders will say that because he's satirising crap movies he wanted to make this film in a way that was all style and no substance, and that's what's so clever about it - but I say, why put so much time effort and talent into sculpting something that appears totally crap when there are enough untalented people who can give you the same result much cheaper and quicker.

At the end all I could think was "What a pity". There were many good concepts and ideas here but by cramming them all together and not giving any of them enough breathing space, none really come out on top.

Some of the film's defenders make comments along the lines of "If you don't like it, it's because you don't understand it properly and your puny mind can't comprehend how brilliant it is." My take - I think I understand what the film is trying to do. I just think it did it really, really poorly.

Long rambling slice of life in an alternative America just before the end of the world by the creator of Donnie Darko. Surprisingly well acted by everyone except Sean William Scott, this film is so out there as to be in another galaxy. Truly operating in a world not our own, you either have to accept it on its own terms or you'll go mad. At times hysterically funny in an uneasy "is this a comedy or not?" sort of way it comes off more or less like a huge joke on everyone from the studio heads to the audience. Richard Kelly can't be serious.... Watching it I was both drawn in hoping at some point something would make sense and not seem like we were being put on, while at the same time ripping it apart as nothing made sense and it just got weirder and weirder for no good reason. Running at a length something akin to 4 days long I can't imagine what this was like in its longer cut. I think the best description of the film is Roger Eberts screaming venom filled rant. While I do not have that much bile to cover it I completely understand where he's coming from.

This is probably the most baffling movie experience I've ever had. I can not get the hang of what this is. The tone is all over the place, the plot (if there is one) is so chopped up and just plain weird that I can't get a grip on it. I gather that this is satire. But of what, I have no idea. Everything?

For satire to really work, I think you have to have a clear standpoint and a clear target. Something that preferably could be expressed in one sentence. This could not be described at all. What does the movie want from me? Who is the movie? Is it right-wing, poking fun at the inefficient, hypocritical, weed-smoking neo-Marxists? Is it leftist parodying the gun toting, all-American doofuses to the right? Is it violently centrist, wanting to expose everyone to either side of the absolute middling mediocrity as extremist? Does it consider itself too good to take part in any political discussion, just experiencing everyone with an even slightly political opinion as a clown? I don't know. Which makes it feel more like a satire targeting other movies than of anything political, despite the entire spectrum stewing in this pot.

So, it's a political satire of no particular persuasion, which instead ends up playing like a spoof of a movie, or possibly a whole genre, that never existed - which I would really be required to get familiar with in order to understand any of the jokes in this one. If they are in fact jokes. It's like a series of edgy takes on tropes that no-one has ever heard of, but with the conviction that they are all tired clichés that need strange twists.

If Neil Breen suddenly became self-aware and technically adept, I believe this is what he would make.

It's like a severely cut-down adaptation of a long running comic book that was never written. There are glimpses of worldbuilding that would maybe make sense if this was an already established place, something I had read about for years and this was just an attempt at boiling down and cramming every important plot-point and twist from a decades-worth of storylines into one movie. Except it's just this movie. Well, and some tie-in stuff the director did, but basically, it's just this movie. Maybe he has a casket of old notebooks he's scribbled in since he was twelve, that he's then tried to summarize like this and there was no-one around to stop him. I don't know. The title kind of suggests a series of stories set in this world. Perhaps an anthology show would have worked. But I doubt it somehow.

There is also a strange disconnect between the overacting, the insane plot-threads and the serious music and technical know-how. It looks like an early 2000's action movie. If they popped the colors more it could be Michael Bay for all I know. The score sounds entirely sincere, like it thinks it's part of something important. Match that with everyone behaving like they're in an SNL-sketch (or should I say MAD-tv since Will Sasso is here?) and the whole thing comes off as lampooning moviemaking in general. Plus that bizarro voice-over, whatever that's supposed to do.

And now I wonder how much of this is intentional and how much just ended up that way. Is it failing at coolness? Is it succeeding at being laughable?

Somehow the fairly movie-looking visuals makes it feel more pretentious to me. Had it all been shot on Super 8 on one cheap cardboard set redressed and disguised as different locations, accompanied by an organ, it would at least come off as the Ed Wood brand of naïve sincerity. Then the cartoonish acting-style would fit right in. It would feel like a passion project scrambled together by sheer willpower and despite all its failings it would be some kind of avant-garde. But this?

I cannot in good concience call this good in any way, shape or form. But it isn't boring. Stuff happens all the time. What happens, or why? No idea. But it does. Looking at the run-time I thought I would bail out, but those hours just flew by as I was scratching my head 'til it blead trying to figure out what was going on.

What does it want? Is the attempt to be profound? To be provocative? To be a cult movie? Because that's never a good idea. At the same time though, maybe that is the only thing it has succeeded at. Or has it? I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Is this a movie? Is this a failure? Is this art? Is this a statement? Is this a joke? Can it be all of them?

The movie has the same imagination and inventiveness that was present in Donnie Darko, it was just spread entirely too thinly over a much more grandiose endeavor, and consequently fails to give any plot element real meaning, or any character real substance. This appears intentional in certain instances, but I can't believe that this somehow is a serious critique of American society. It is a similar disappointment as Mike Judge's Idiocracy...which also had some good imaginativeness behind it, and a few memorable amusing moments, but also fell way short of his previous work. This film appears to be grasping at David Lynch types of absurdity (as well as ripping off the Cohen Brothers with the Soldier sequence and Star Wars with the chapters) but the cast and the acting is too absurd and overdone for this to be effective...and what's left is just a mess...with a few memorable moments...but I have to believe that Kelly attempted to salvage the film by showing that it doesn't take itself seriously. Thus, "I'm a pimp...and pimps don't commit suicide." Still, the Rock, Wallace Shawn, and Justin Timerlake, and Sarah Michelle Gellar are great...as is the soundtrack and some of the cinematography. But it seems doubtful to me that any studio is going to sponsor another Kelly controlled project anytime soon...although his does have a knack for directing music videos. I'm unsure if any of the innumerable loose plot ends were resolved in some of the half hour or so cut (at least Jeanine Garofollo's random appearance for 2 seconds at the end of the movie would probably make a bit more sense)...but I am definitely grateful those cuts were made regardless...since 2 and a half hours was enough time wasted.

Probably the worst film i've seen in a while (except for the very worst 'slipstream' by Sir Anthony Hopkins) It never seemed to be going anywhere and made very little sense. A few one liners that made me laugh , but bored me silly and considering the cast i'm unsure why any of them took the part. It was so bad i don't even want to bother trying to work out if i missed some key part to the movie to help make it more sense. I'd rate it as the 3rd worst movie i've ever seen behind Slipstream and Battlefield Earth. I cant really add any spoilers as i'm unsure how to explain any part of the movie to ruin it for you , so better if you watch for yourself and make up your own minds

Southland Tales is an ensemble piece set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

Like many who have panned this film, I have the same reasons. It's tedious to endure and just a waste of time to think what's even going on. It seems obvious to me that this could've been "Donnie Darko" with a bigger budget. The whole movie is such an incoherent piece of abstract mess!

And yes, it's really frustrating to understand this piece of "work." Richard Kelly wants to make this film original and clever--probably trying too hard to leave audience into thinking this film is really stupid. There is really nothing else to say here. The only thing that is good in here are the visual effects. So if you want to see a movie just to see the visuals, watch this and spend 145 minutes of your life on it! This has to be one of the worst films in 2007.

How do you follow-up a widely praised, wildly popular cult phenomenon such as "Donnie Darko?" This is the question that I am sure occupied Richard Kelly for many frustrating years. My retrospective advice to the overly-ambitious writer/director would have been to avoid trying to out-do his debut effort and simply concentrate on telling a strong and fascinating story as he did before. It was never the size nor the scale that made "Darko" a mini-masterpiece of cult cinema, it was the modest telling of an intimate and spellbinding story that gave it such resonance with audiences. Kelly follows many of the young, first time film directors in his sophomore effort by trying to produce an epic saga that is blatantly begging for cult status but ends up coming off as just a little bit too desperate.

Southland Tales has had a worrying release history that is so tarnished by poor word of mouth and unfocused marketing ploys that it would seem the film might never see the inside of a cinema. It was booed at Cannes, lambasted by critics, sold as a synergistic marketing device with ties to graphic novels and random merchandise, yet no one could truly decipher what the hell this film was actually supposed to be about. From the initial, excitable hype that he was following up "Darko" with another sci-fi laced puzzle box through to the increasingly negative post-production publicity, Southland Tales has been called every name under the sun, being championed as either a misunderstood masterpiece or a great big stuffed turkey. Whether Southland Tales is "misunderstood" or not is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, but to me it clearly is a complete and utter mess.

From the plot to the characters, the casting decisions and the back story, the visual effects and the designed look of this alternate 2008 Los Angeles, right down to the general flow of the narrative, Southland Tales strikes me as the biggest blunder to emerge from a promising filmmaker's brain since David Lynch muddled his way through "Dune." The comparison is justified too. Give an independent start-up too much money and too much control and you get an ego trip into their shallowest and most ostentatious thoughts (witness M. Night Shaymalan's catastrophic Lady in the Water as the best example of this directorial condition). Kelly has shaped an entire universe on the superficiality of good looking people, and then based an entire "plot" around the vacuous existences that they sleep walk through, whilst giving pretentious allusions to topical issues such as Iraq and using an Orwellian dystopia as his playground to parade his toys in. This may all be the point of a confounding silly story that revolves around an amnesiac action star, his porn star girlfriend, a Neo-Marxist terrorist organisation and a Republican Big Brother corporation policing the state. Yes, we get it. It's all very allegorical for where we are and where we may be headed, but its not original, or particularly interesting. Kelly is clearly having a cinematic w@nk here. It is almost imminently forgettable once he cums, leaving only a messy stain on the brain with very little resonance.

The worst aspect of this overlong, pompous movie is the cast. Let's just say that when the best performance of a film goes to Justin Timberlake, we're in trouble. They are all pretty terrible. The Rock is endearingly crap no matter what he's doing, proving to be Arnie's successor quite comfortably, while Sarah Michelle Gellar personifies pure sex appeal but is as plastic as a Barbie doll, though her comic timing compensates substantially. Sean William Scott proves he can play a slight variation on Stifler, but only just. Christopher Lambert and Jon Lovitz have entirely pointless cameos and are of the cringe worthy variety. Timberlake does good narration. That's it. This is quite possible the poorest ensemble a movie is ever likely to see this decade. Kelly's attempts to cast the hip up and comers of Hollywood were all popular in the late nineties/early millennium but he really needs to get with the times. With the exception of Gellar (because part of me loves her too much) this is the anti-thesis of a hip, trendy cast. Half of them can't act and those that can seem confused as to how to play their parts. It appears no one really understood what the director was trying to achieve. The feeling is contagious.

Occasionally Kelly musters some inspired, even beautiful visuals (his picturesque location shots stand out) while his abstract eye for the weird and wonderful seeps through from time to time (witness Sean William Scott's delayed reflection in the mirror). But a good eye for visual aesthetics does not make-up for a bad ear for dialogue. The prose of the vastly overwritten screenplay ranges from affectively cryptic to clunking chunks of p!ss-poor. Southland Tales is just too ambitious for its own good. Not to say it's as bad as everyone said it was, but it's a big letdown after such promising beginnings. Unlocking the deeper meaning of an enigmatic story is only fun when you make a film worthy of repeat viewings. For me, watching this unfocused creative muddle again would be way too infuriating and far too tedious. That said, there is a strange car crash fascination in watching it all unravel before your very eyes because it is so convinced of its own self-importance. It may come off as a maddening experience filled with impenetrable oddities, but it earns extra points for making me laugh by way of some scenes that are genuinely funny, or even unintentionally funny.

Southland Tales is not the worst film ever, but it is a long way down the road from ever reaching greatness. Watch it to see which side you fall on; misunderstood masterpiece or great big stuffed turkey, but I am very sad to say I am inclined to agree with the French on this one - Boo!!!!

You'll have to forget why there are so many faces you recognise in this movie, there's no way to work it out. On the one hand they could have been cuing up to work with Kelly and Kelly just said yes to them all. On the other the studio could have seen the script and in order to claw back some revenue they put in a fail safe by covering a range of names so the largest demographic possible may be tempted into watching it.

There's a dreamy cool idea somewhere in the whole thing, it's probably coherent in Kelly's head, but a lot of us have those, it's the translation to script then screen that takes the effort and talent. Unfortunately it seems missing here. The script probably started well and a sense of something interesting comes across, but instead of ripping his hair out to carry on with and and persist to the very end it seems Kelly took an ego trip feeling nay a word could be written wrong. Oops.

Kelly seems to have been the lucky gambler with Darko, lead to believe that he has the talent of someone much bigger. Maybe that movie was just a lot simpler, I mean you have a standard event which is basically over complicated by time travel, interesting viewing and atmospheric all the same though.

With Southland Tales the yawning chasm of story craft is evident. Is Kelly a one trick pony that was lucky enough to have all the elements come together with Darko? Southland Tales would suggest it. Only time will tell however. If you want to know what an underdeveloped movie looks like where you just assume everyone will get your mood and feeling watch this movie. A damn shame? Or an inevitability?

Many comments made in response to those that couldn't understand what was going on in this film is suggesting to read the graphic novels. I'm of the opinion that a film should be a stand-alone piece of work.

The only impression I got from this movie is that it portrays a over the top taste how the world might look in 20 years from now when the millennials and those born in the 90s are in charge. But, heck, I don't know... Who am I to judge?

Many call it an under-rated film. I work a lot with statistics and as the rating is a mean (or the median) of all votes, the ones claiming it to be under-rated belong to a smaller, underrepresented sub group. Sorry guys, but it is correctly rated.

Let me begin by saying I don't hate this film but I just don't get it, either artistically or literally. From reading some of the other comments on the board I guess there is some sort of literature or graphic novel to explain the missing first three chapters, not that I think it will make a difference.

I'm not a big fan of having to read up on a film before viewing it to help me understand what is going on. I think a film should be able to stand on it's own merit without any support. A lot of people who will view this film will be unaware of the prequel graphic novels and the fact that the director of this film is also the director of Donnie Darko.

Unlike Donnie Darko which was also a difficult film to understand, this film is not interesting. I kept waiting for the full 145 minutes for it to get interesting and was disappointed. The script definitely needed more work because there is not much of a storyline that you would want to follow.

Unless your a big fan of Richard Kelly's work, I would advise you to stay away from this film.

This movie is reminiscent of Be Cool in that it is deluged with celebrities in order to distract you from the fact there is simply no script. This is like a new age ecstacy head's dream that they understand quantum physics and the world and everything man... and then they wrote a script.. ugh. So what happens in this movie? It's slightly in the future, dreamlike and in LA. Our good guys are the neo-marxist liberals while the bad guys are the neocon fascists. The Rock has shown up in the desert with no memory of why or how he got there and is taken in by a porn star who has a talk show, however this is just one tiny part of a long convoluted plot that has double crosses and intrigue and blackmail but it's all LA style cokehead logic that requires absolutely no reality involved whatsoever.

You will continually feel like you are starting to understand where this movie is headed and then wind up scratching your head again going what is the deal with this loopy looney tune script? As they say- there's 3 things that come out of California- Fruits, Nuts and Flakes. This movie has em all. The movie is a complete waste of time on all levels but it is visually appealing to watch and occasionally humorous if you don't mind the fact that the script is headed nowhere.

I would recommend watching this movie under the influence of heavy pharmaceuticals to be in the correct altered state to receive the thrust of this script. Unfortunately no nudity even though there are tons of hot girls in the movie.. lame.

Well, that was ... something. I guess I can say that to his credit, Richard Kelly certainly didn't play it safe with this highly ambitious follow-up to Donnie Darko. On the positive side, I loved the framework and how it mirrored concerns of post-911 America and the Patriot Act, with a surveillance state set up in response to terrorism, routine use of deadly force, and the Democratic party reduced to a fringe group of neo-Marxists. It's essentially high-tech fascism, and with little bits dropped in during the news feeds and the allusion to Roe v. Wade being overturned, feels disturbingly relevant. Outside of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, I also liked the casting, which included a large number of stars and SNL alumni, such as Cheri O'Teri.

Unfortunately, the storytelling was convoluted beyond belief, and in ways that staggered the mind. Kelly tried to pack way too many things in here - intricate subplots, lots of characters, and what seemed like an attempt at every possible film genre. One that he should have dropped was the comedy, because the forays there made for some atrociously bad dialogue. Now I must admit that a part of what made the film a torture for me was just how unfocused and confusing it was, but sharper minds than mine kept up with it better and undoubtedly enjoyed it more. For my part, I groaned with each new wacky scene, e.g. A Justin Timberlake music video that came out of nowhere (why?), that along with his bizarre narration made his role especially strange (and that's saying something). Deep down at its core there are some good ideas, but the execution was off in the weeds, and I was very glad when the 144(!) minutes were over.