Product Description

SOUTHLAND TALES is an ensemble piece set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles as it stands on the brink of social economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) an adult film star developing her own reality television project and Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.System Requirements:Running Time: 144 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/CRIME Rating: R UPC: 043396182837 Manufacturer No: 18283

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8066 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2008-03-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.25 pounds
• Running time: 144 minutes

Amazon.com
Well, filmmakers should aim high, they say. And Richard Kelly shot the moon on his highly-anticipated follow-up to cult sensation Donnie Darko, which expands the apocalyptic mood of that movie and blows it up tenfold. Set during the election season of 2008, Southland Tales proposes a series of apparently linked events: the reappearance of a vanished movie star (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), now an amnesiac; the bizarre doubling of a policeman (Seann William Scott in two roles); the development of an energy source from ocean waves; and the presence of an Iraq War veteran (Justin Timberlake) who seems to be watching everything, and narrating some of it. Not that the narration helps; even with voice-over (reportedly added after the film's disastrous debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival), Southland Tales doesn't come close to making sense, let alone at the minimum level of dangling a carrot to lead the audience along (even Mulholland Drive had a semblance of murder mystery to be solved, or not). The cast is loaded with Saturday Night Live cut-ups, but only Jon Lovitz connects, and in other roles people like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, Bai Ling, and John Larroquette are utterly mystifying, by no fault of their own. In some of the musical sequences Kelly gets in stride, but it's easy to create drama in a three-minute music video, and harder to do over two and a half hours. Some top critics rushed to champion the movie, as though flying in the face of philistinism, so feel free to try out this incoherent pastiche for yourself. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Hard to "get" but worth it
This film, the second from "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly, is definitely not for everyone. The story is a bit convoluted, but becomes so much clearer when experienced in combination with the prequel graphic novels. This apocalyptic-action-thriller-drama is a very dark comedy with a lot of excellent commentary on the state of us right now. Taken to an extreme? Yes. Worth it? Very.

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways
I hesitantly agreed to rent this with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago. I saw the ensemble actor list and thought that perhaps it might be okay, if nothing brilliant. Was. I. Ever. Wrong.

I am the type of person that will usually see the good points in any film, be it a classic like 'Casablanca' or C-Grade movies like "From Justin to Kelly". But it was impossible to find any such merits with this film. I truly believe that the makers of this film intended it to be watched while dropping acid. That is the only way this film could have been understood. While I saw the long list of actors as a positive (after all, they must have read the script and gave carefull consideration as to its worth) but in the back of my mind, a concern itched that too many main characters might make the film hard to follow. DUH! So, they had a few dozen story lines going in completely different directions, each one with its bizarre futuristic twist, and unbelievable scenarios, and at times the dialogue was so bad I almost believe the writers were trying to invent their own language. At the end of the movie, my boyfriend and I sat, jaw-slacked at the sheer incredibility of what we had seen. We could not describe it else to anyone we had seen, but only to say that watching it for free (we had a free rental) was a complete waste of our time and we sorely regretted the two hours (was it really two? seemed like 10) of hour lives we wasted that we will never get back. Don't buy it, don't rent it. Don't let someone bamboozle you into watching over at their house. Trust me, you will regret it.

This is the way Richard Kelly's film career ends..
Richard Kelly is a modern day surrealist, plumbing the depths of his own subconsious for material. But surrealism is, of necessity, a counter-cultural endeavor. David Lynch has demonstrated that the surrealist filmaker still has a small niche in Hollywood, but only if he can maintain a bit of distance (from the establishment) and control (over the product). Here, Kelly has wedded himself to the Hollywood establishment in an earnest, uncritical and unrefined way. The actors don't seem to understand their roles, the script or the symbolism. Their performance is the absolute worst of Hollywood - a sort of plastic hyperrealism. And that would be great if this film were a joke at their expense. But Kelly's commentary suggests that this was meant to be a political film - about terrorism, civil liberties, and the right. If this was really his purpose, he has failed utterly.

My read on this film is that Kelly really had no idea what he was making, and didn't care much - he was just letting his mind go free. But pitching a script to Hollywood people means you have to make it "about" something. In the process of getting this movie greenlighted and then made, Kelly was forced to explain (and then mortgage) his dream to hundreds of different people. It is a safe bet that few of these people had ever heard of Robert Frost (let alone Phillip K. Dick), so Southland Tales became whatever they wanted it to be. For Sarah Michelle Gellar, a political film; for the Rock, a sci-fi thriller; and for John Larroquette, a job.

It is safe to say that this movie marks the end of Kelly's Hollywood career. My advice to him is: go indie. Oh, what could have been with a smaller budget and fewer stars! Still, there is enough going on here that its worth taking a look at. But this is barely a "movie" let alone a "film."