Southland Tales

Another Mind Blowing Sci-fi Movie From the Writer/Director of Donnie Darko

Southland Tales is director Richard Kelly's follow up to his cult hit Donnie Darko. Considering that Donnie Darko's popularity grew so huge that it's one of the few films I can think of that actually got a theatrically released director's cut, whatever Kelly released next seemed destined to be huge... at least in the nerd/art house film crowd. Yet Southland Tales is still a little known movie, a fact made even stranger considering the film's all star cast.

When I say "all star" I mean that in a pretty close to literal sense. Just about everybody with a speaking role is a well known actor, although most of them play characters unlike anything they've ever played before. No really. It's got Dwayne Johnson, Sean William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, John Laroquette, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith, Justin Timberlake and the bald dude from The Princess Bride.

With this many stars, it's no surprise that Janeane Gerafalo's role ended up getting cut down to a half second cameo.

So why haven't you probably heard of this movie? Truth be told, it didn't fare too well with critics in early screenings. They were mostly baffled by the film's intricately twisting storylines, and onslaught of geek references. Presumably, based on the bad early press, it was given a very small theatrical release, even by art house film standards. But this really isn't a movie for critics at all. This is a movie for fanboys looking for an out and out crazy piece of hard sci-fi.

Now you're going to ask me what it's about right? That's where it gets a bit tricky. The short version is that it's about the way the world ends. Not with a whisper, but with a bang.

The long version, is that it's a Bush-era fable about a world where government paranoia has gone rampant. Terrorists detonate a pair of nuclear bombs over Texas, prompting the nation throw control of Congress over to the Republicans. In turn, they put the nation on complete lockdown, with visas required for interstate travel and heavily armed soldiers in the streets.

Against this backdrop are interweaving stories about the citizens of L.A. in this new world. There's Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) an action star with political connections who has amnesia and finds himself in the company of Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star trying to go legit. There's Ronald Taverner (Sean William Scott), a cop who finds himself caught up with a group of Neo-Marxists trying to take down the government. We follow the government employees who believe that they're restoring order to the world, the Neo-Marxists who think they're doing the same thing, and everybody else who is caught up in between, whether deliberately or not.

However, it's not so much the plot that's the draw of this story as is the execution. If you've ever seen Donnie Darko, you should have some idea what to expect next. For starters, the one liners are fantastic. If you thought Samantha Darko asking "What's a fuck-ass?" at the dinner table was good, you ought to hear the stuff that comes out of Sarah Michelle Gellar's mouth.

Then there's the whole sci-fi aspect. Much like Donnie Darko, the characters find themselves subjected to things like parallel dimensions, time travel, destiny and religion. Yet there's never that moment where everybody figures out exactly what is going on. Suffice to say, things get really freakin' weird fast.

Thankfully, they never get weird in the David Lynch, I'm-never-going-to-figure-this-shit-out kind of way. You'll be able to follow the plot (mostly) on the first time through, but there's going to be a lot of stuff that is going to go over your head. This movie just politely asks that you sit back, enjoy the soundtrack, and let it blow your mind. It begs you to watch it again with the promise that you'll have a better understanding of what you just saw the next time around.

As you can guess, this is an extremely ambitious movie, a fact made more notable considering that the movie wasn't even envisioned as the entire story. You'll note that after an extensive prolog, the story starts out at chapter 4. That's because Richard Kelly conceived this story as a truly multi-media extravaganza, with parts of the story told in different formats. There was supposed to be a massive viral marketing campaign and a comic book mini-series leading up to the release. The comic, which tells the first three chapters of the story didn't get that wide a release and the online aspect was started but never really completed. For example, even two years after this movie's release, the website for the character Krysta Now, the porn star/aspiring businesswoman, still has a coming soon banner on most of its pages. In case you're wondering, it's not essential to read the comic before seeing the movie. The important parts of the comic are summarized at the start of the movie, but it gives the viewer a better understanding of the back story.

The soundtrack, as I mentioned before, is incredible. For one thing, Moby was such a fan of Donnie Darko that he agreed to score the film, which is something he rarely ever does. Then there's selections by the Pixies, Waylon Jennings, Blur and a nice little number sung by Sarah Michelle Gellar as Krysta Now called "Teen Horniness is Not a Crime." Of all of these, the showpiece is the scene where Justin Timberlake lip syncs to The Killers' "All These Things I've Done," during a hallucination filled with dancing nurses.

Like I said before, this is an ambitious movie, but while that's a phrase usually used to describe movies that aspire to be something great and fall extremely short, Southland Tales seems to be every bit the epic Richard Kelly hoped it would be when he started work on it. This is a movie that will probably never be part of the mainstream, but I suspect that over time it will find its audience and become a cult hit. That being said, I recommend renting it soon so that you can say you were one of the cool kids who saw it before everybody else.

Promo Art courtesy of Darko Entertainment