Although “Southland Tales” is billed as “an epic story set over the course of three days that culminate in a massive 4th of July celebration,” it took less than 20 minutes for me to realize that an adjective other than epic would have been more suitable in describing this type of story. Instead, words like execrable, dreadful, ghastly and awful — any synonym for bad, really — would have been a better fit.
This film has no resemblance to what one thinks when the phrase “epic story” comes to mind. The only things “epic” about “Southland Tales” are its excessive length and beyond sub-par performances. Writer/director Richard Kelly of “Donnie Darko” fame has delivered something that isn’t so much a film as it’s a MySpace video with poor art direction and a “star”-powered ensemble cast that fails to carry the film.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Boxer Santaros, an action star stricken with amnesia, but his performance doesn’t covey this convincingly. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project. Her performance reminded me of a wanna-be movie star straight out of high school, and her part in the film could have been substituted for an intimate object that is less displeasing to the senses.
Seann William Scott plays Roland Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast consipiracy. Perhaps the conspiracy is how major moneymaking studios put together big-budget wastes of time with no-talent “star” ensembles to lure unsuspecting audiences into paying nearly $10 for visual junk food.
The rest of the cast is a mixture of new and old faces, including Jon Lovitz, who — let’s face it — doesn’t really belong on the big screen. The costumes are meant to be futuristic in appearance, but instead they like they could have been bought at a wacky costume store.
The cinematography of the film is redundant and non-creative, especially the yawningly boring shot sequences unsuccessfully disguised as interesting perspectives. The sets look overdone and too purposeful, while the unnecessary special effects are not good enough to cover up possibly one of the worst scripts ever written.
The movie is filled with scenes that lack fluidity and connectivity with the characters or stories. Movies like these make me reminisce about the old days when epic movies like “Star Wars” had to work at getting an audience into the theater with good action sequences, entertaining performances and plot lines that people could lose themselves in.
Considering all the independent films that are doing well these days, major studios are going to have to find some other trick to hook audiences into putting money into executive’s pockets other than pretty celebrities, big booms, crashes and special effects propped up by emotionless scripts. Sorry, Hollywood, but we’re catching on.
