Sean Baker often works with small budgets, but he’s one of the most provocative filmmakers out there. He focuses on people on the fringes of society, usually also involved the sex trade. Red Rocket continues this exploration, this time following the (mis)adventures of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), a former porn star who returns to his hometown of Texas City on the Gulf Coast as he tries to get back on his feet following an unceremonious exit from the industry scene in L.A.

Shot in just 24 days during the pandemic in 2020, Red Rocket is light on story but heavy on character. Mikey has returned to his hometown, where his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) lives with her mother, Lil (Brenda Deiss), and begs them to take him in. Mikey is broke and without a lot of options; he had bought a one-way bus ticket after getting beat up, his career is essentially over and he’s not welcome at Lexi’s home. But he’s a fast talker and an even better salesman – he lost his southern drawl in California upon learning it’s seen as a sign of low intelligence – and finally talks Lexi into letting him stay a few nights, where he also meets Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), their awkward and gangly neighbour who is simply happy that someone is finally paying attention to him.

Like a rat caught in a cage, Mikey begins to plot his escape right away. First, he needs money, and he hooks up with a local weed supplier, Leondria (Judy Hill), who warns him not to sell weed to the hard-hat workers at the local refinery. Mikey has no problem making money in quick fashion; he’s a primo hustler, and it’s easy to see how he managed to talk his way out of a dead-end small town and into the big leagues, though his penchant for pushing the limits constantly draws the ire of others, and presumably that’s what ended up happening to his career in L.A. Mikey heeds Leondria’s warning until he meets Strawberry (Suzanna Son, holding her own opposite Rex), an innocent-looking high schooler who works at the local donut shop and introduces him to the hard-hat workers, who eventually become his largest clientele.

Mikey believes he’s struck a gold mine with Strawberry, a redhead girl desperate to get out of town and they have two other common interests: weed and sex. Right away, Mikey begins to hatch a plan where he and Strawberry would return to L.A. and start producing porn that they shoot and act themselves. But Mikey has to play the long con to convince her, and sells her on a half-baked plan and pretends to have a lot of money, passing off a rich neighbourhood as his own rather than showing her Lexi’s decrepit, single-story home where he’s staying. For the most part, Strawberry is on board; she’s talented and smart but certainly naïve, and by the end of the film Mikey has presumably dragged another woman down to the pits.

It’s pretty amazing how Baker manages to find all these local people to act in his projects. Rex, a former adult film actor and all-round thespian, is perfectly cast in this role, and without his manic hand waving and fast talking, Red Rocket barely gets off the ground. While in Baker’s previous film, The Florida Project, much of the conflict arose from the individual vs. institutions – a single mom working as a prostitute trying to raise a precocious daughter at a motel near Disney World while managing to fend off child services with the help of a kind-hearted manager – Red Rocket is more about Mikey making sense of his warped worldview. He has little disregard for anybody except himself, and he’s actively supporting the institutions – money and fame – that prey on young idealists like Strawberry.

In a post-screening Q&A with Baker, he had been asked about the lack of change in Mikey’s character, who remains unscrupulous throughout the film and does not follow the traditional character arc of a protagonist. Baker admits that Mikey does not really change, but notes that a lot of the film should be viewed from Lexi’s point of view, whose life had been disturbed by someone who can be personified as a crashing bus. But, in my own personal interpretation of the film, it’s Strawberry who is central to the story, and much of Mikey’s actions and happenstance is because of her. Throughout the film, we realize that Strawberry isn’t always as sweet and innocent as she seems, and it’s hinted that Mikey isn’t the first person old enough to be her dad to try and whisk her off her feet. It is Strawberry whom we are most concerned about at the end of the film, a young girl whose dreams would surely be crushed by Mikey and perhaps inevitably turning her into the next Lexi.

Sometimes, we root for Mikey because he can be a genuinely charming and funny character. Where Red Rocket falters is its lack of conflict and introspection between Mikey vs. himself, and the film devolves into a mishmash of skits that provides a lot of laughs but not a lot of food for thought.

Red Rocket gets three stars out of four.