Red Rocket

X = minus B plus or minus the square root of B squared minus 4AC all over 2A.

Remember that? The dreaded quadratic equation. Spoken proudly by Strawberry (Suzanna Son), a teenage girl smitten with our protagonist Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), who at twice her age isn't pushing her away. It's one of many times Red Rocket nudges you with the reminder that we are watching a scumbag at work. And yet you won't be able to take your eyes off him. What is that all about?

Mikey's back home in Texas City, a city suburb of Houston, along the Gulf coast of Texas. He's a washed up ex-porn star with only two things to his name. The 20 odd dollars in his pocket and the "gift" that made him famous. He's burned all his L.A. bridges and only for his ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) he'd have nowhere to even sleep. She has nothing but disdain for him now, having seen his true colours but he's wormed his way under her roof with a promise to help out financially. He's a user, other people are mere stepping stones to him and now he has two more in his sights, Lexi's naive neighbour Lonnie (Ethan Darbone) who has a car and Strawberry, the underage girl who works in his favourite doughnut shop, who he sets his sights on in an attempt to get back into the money.

Sean Baker stays on familiar turf with his latest look at the places we only ever drive by and the people who we never think about and he's made another stunner, his first feature film since 2017's The Florida Project. The lovable characters from there are wholly absent here, replaced by an irredeemable bastard who can believably charm the pants (often literally) off everyone he meets and Simon Rex (himself a real life ex porn performer) sells the part perfectly. You'll never once feel like you're watching an actor when he's onscreen, it's as naturalistic a performance as you'll have seen in an age, making it seem like we're watching a documentary rather than a feature film. The way he treats everyone around him will enrage you but he's so magnetic in his part you can see exactly why everyone falls for him. Baker never judges him either, he lays it all out for us to see and don't worry, you won't like him. If you do.... well that's a worry.

One of the first things Mikey does to make money is head back to his old drug connect Leondria (Judy Hill) to start selling for her again, and of course he gets high on his own supply, using stars and stripes rolling papers because he's, in his own words, a patriot. It's just another way for Baker to remind us that we're looking at the dark side of the American dream. It's not set in 2016 for nothing. The age of Trump was in full flow, America was rapidly becoming a place not to want to visit but to be horrified by and Red Rocket is a powerful glimpse at the people who inhabit a rancid little corner of it, a dump intertwined with the some of America's most famous symbols, pornography, drugs, oil and loads of doughnuts.

In cinemas now and genuinely worth your time.