DVD review (region 1 & 2)
Directed by Richard Kelly
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Christopher Lambert, Wallace Shawn, Mandy Moore
Release date Out now (region 1); 31 March 2008

LA, 2008. It’s three years since the US has been struck by a nuclear attack, sparking off World War Three. With the planet teetering on the brink of the apocalypse, amnesiac action star Boxer Santaros (Johnson), police officer Ronald Taverner (William Scott) and porn star Krysta Now (Gellar) are caught up in a far-reaching conspiracy…

The Cannes screening of Richard Kelly’s sophomore effort didn’t go well. Mercilessly torn to shreds by critics, who ridiculed it as an over-long, pretentious mess, it prompted the director to hide away for a year to totally re-edit the movie. Now, finally, audiences have the chance to assess Kelly’s radically different take on the film, which is 20 minutes shorter than the original three-hour cut and includes a giddying animated prologue. And as much as we hate to say it, Southland Tales is still an over-long, pretentious mess.

The frustrating thing is that there are a lot of fascinating ideas at work here. The depiction of a near-future LA torn apart by neo-Marxist terrorists, violent cops, industrialists and politicians has much potential, and the film certainly creates a palatable sense of anarchy. But Kelly’s absurdly complicated storyline introduces so many plot threads and characters that, by the time a portal to another dimension is introduced late in the film, you’ve long since given up trying to piece it all together.

Kelly seems to have been heavily influenced by the convoluted comic novels of Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon. Yet the work of these authors is notoriously unfilmable, and if you’re one of the few people who sat through Breakfast of Champions you’ll know why. Kelly’s script has neither the wit nor intellect of these authors, and it’s not long before the hysterical tone and cartoonish characters (played by a wildly eclectic cast) start to make your head throb. Even with 20 minutes lopped off, it’s a movie lacking any kind of discipline and at times it is staggeringly self-indulgent (in one rather horrible musical sequence Justin Timberlake’s Marine mimes along to All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers for reasons unknown).

Kelly’s Donnie Darko was a minor masterpiece, a beguiling fantasy quite unlike anything we had seen before – and at times you can see flashes of that genius in Southland Tales. But even the most forgiving Donnie Darko fan is likely to find this hard work. Confusing, noisy and hopelessly unfunny, it’s a fascinating failure, but a failure all the same. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 4/10
An incoherent disaster with moments of brilliance.

Click here for an interview with the cast and crew of Southland Tales.