Red Rocket

Baker’s movies have always been about location, location, location, and Red Rocket is no different.

It is Rexs extraordinary puppy-dog vigour that makes the character tolerable in spite of his repeated appalling decisions.

As well as being filthy, droll and almost unbearably tense, it offers great news for anyone too broke to go to drama school.

A dirty delight. Weird, smart, fantastic and very, very wrong.

Rex actively underplays Mikey’s self-interest and cruelty, so that -- in a way -- the audience becomes an equal target of his manipulation.

Rex, who has a colourful background of his own, is charismatic enough to leave no doubt about Mikey’s powers of persuasion. The question is whether audiences will tolerate the company of someone who starts out bad and gets worse.

Baker's appreciation for even the smallest roles is a chief delight of Red Rocket.

Director Sean Baker, whose credits include “Tangerine” (2015) and “The Florida Project” (2017), pins together another poignant portrait of class, race and gender at the margins of society without relying on poverty tropes

That was a damn pleasure

What you get is the high-standard character study that Sean Baker has always succeeded in bringing with unusual people in common struggles from daily life.