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In the spirit of full disclosure, I am among the legion of cult fans of writer/director Richard Kelly’s mind-bending Donnie Darko, a love-it or hate-it movie that, for me, was more about style and mood than figuring out every last detail. That being said, there is a certain sense of logic, sometimes flawed, and even the whiff of a standard linear plot structure, albeit convoluted, that you can follow. I give it a pass since it’s essentially a science-fiction fable about time travel. Whether or not every little detail makes perfect sense is irrelevant; after all, I don’t hear people nitpicking similar lapses of logic in The Terminator films.

What’s to me is so compelling about Donnie Darko is how Kelly managed to tell this odd story using such memorable and stark imagery: the recurring nightmare of a man in a twisted bunny mask; the sharp contrast between the sanctimonious do-gooders and the dark underbelly of American life; and, the frequent shots of the titular character leering directly into the camera, ala Stanley Kubrick’s signature shot, as if he could see right through us.

Suffice to say that even despite the early reports of problems with Kelly’s long-awaited and much-anticipated follow-up, Southland Tales, I was ready and willing to use the same rose-colored glasses when viewing the film. Knowing and understanding some of the complaints people had over Donnie Darko, I took with a grain of salt the news of how Southland Tales was booed at the Cannes Film Festival and then subsequently received many unkind theatrical reviews. That Kelly had strangely chosen to cast a number of comedians in various roles – many of whom were alums of Saturday Night Live – and then put people like Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as prominent leads sort of intrigued me. As such, I fully expected to settle in for another out-of-sync and slightly off-kilter view of American life… this time framed against the outbreak of World War III.

Boy, was I ever wrong. I sat and watched… and watched some more as my eyes slowly started to glaze over and I realized there wasn’t a thread of plot or logic to follow – convoluted or otherwise. Even after struggling to stay awake and paying close attention for fear I might have missed something for nearly two-and-a-half hours, I’m still hard- pressed to recap any sort of synopsis or plot. Contrary to online posts from fanboys who have obviously drunk Kelly’s Kool-Aid, there’s no big mystery here, no intricate puzzle waiting to be interpreted and revealed. It’s a disjointed and wholly nonsensical mess made by someone who had demonstrated a unique talent in the past but has brazenly chosen to squander it on a project that clearly needed someone else to step in and put it back on track. After an interesting opening sequence in which a July 4th backyard barbecue ends abruptly with a mushroom cloud on the horizon, the film quickly disintegrated into a series of illogical cameo walk-ons when people like Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and Cheri Oteri trying to do “drama” instantly took me out of the movie.

My apologies in advance for what you are about to read, but just keep in mind it makes even less sense seeing it played out onscreen. After two nuclear attacks on Abilene and El Paso, Texas on July 4, 2005, America is thrust into World War III. The draft is reinstated, and a severe pumped-up version of the Patriot Act is put in force, leading to widespread censorship and surveillance akin to Orwell’s Big Brother. As such, various rebel groups have sprung up everywhere, the most active being the Neo-Marxists based in Venice Beach, California. With a pending election between the Democratic Clinton/Lieberman ticket (I bet Kelly now regrets that prognostication) and the fictional Republican Elliot/Frost ticket looming, California is seen as a crucial electoral battleground state. The latter ticket faces a potential setback when action movie star Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) is kidnapped and disappears for days. Santaros just so happens to be married to Republican candidate Bobby Frost’s (Holmes Osborne) daughter, Madeline (Mandy Moore), and it is believed the kidnapping was arranged by the Neo-Marxists in an attempt to influence the election.

The film proper opens with Boxer waking up alone in the desert. He’s come back, but apparently suffers from amnesia as we’re told by the narrator, an Iraqi war veteran named Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake) who sits on guard duty at the Santa Monica Pier watching a bank of video monitors and reading from the Bible. Boxer is now shacked up with a former porn star named Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who has convinced him that they have co-authored a screenplay titled The Power, which forecasts the end of the world. As if America didn’t have enough problems, the country is also in the throes of an energy crisis, and a German scientist named Baron von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) has invented a machine that runs on ocean waves to create a field of wireless energy known as Fluid Karma. Meanwhile, a nationwide surveillance and information system known as USIDent – controlled by none other than Bobby’s wife, Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson) – is searching for her missing son-in-law, Boxer. Being an eager capitalist, Krysta is hoping to cash in on Boxer and offers to strike a deal for some tapes of her and Boxer in a compromising position in exchange for money to fund her self-named empire.

Whew! Still with me? The “plot” thickens when we meet Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott), a Los Angeles police officer who apparently has fallen in with one of the Neo-Marxist groups and has kidnapped an LAPD cop – Roland Taverner (also Seann William Scott) who just happens to be his twin brother. Ronald has agreed to meet with Boxer Santaros to allow him do research and ride along with him for his film project. Unbeknownst to Boxer, however, is that Ronald and his Neo-Marxist buddies have apparently set him up to witness the staged double murder of Dion (Wood Harris) and Dream (Amy Poehler), two rap artists who are also leaders in the Neo-Marxist movement. They hope a video of a racist cop shooting two of their leaders will incite the Neo-Marxists to riot. But when another LAPD cop named Bart Bookman (Jon Lovitz) shows up on the scene unexpectedly, he insists on providing backup and ends up actually shooting and killing Dion and Dream (Ronald’s gun had been loaded with blanks and the couple was rigged with fake squibs).

Confusion mounts as the story, such as it is, bounces back and forth between characters and settings, never letting any one sink in enough to be at all comprehensible. There are countless subplots, like how the Fluid Karma is being abused as a drug by injecting it into people’s necks; how Ronald and Roland aren’t really brothers, but two versions of the same person – doppelgangers, if you will; how Boxer also has a doppelganger who died out in the desert; how Baron von Westphalen is actually hoping to destroy capitalism and destroy God by taking control of the country; and how everything is leading up to another apocalypse and, inevitably, the second coming of the Messiah. While all signs point to Boxer Santaros as the new Christ (given his penchant for religious tattoos, at least), it ends up being Roland Taverner who goes through some type of resurrection when he encounters his other self near the end of the film. It all falls apart in a mishmash of half-baked philosophy and random religious ideas that Kelly seemed to pluck out of the air to serve his loose narrative structure. Probably most disappointing to me is how, despite the film’s lack of coherence, it doesn’t even boast the stylistic flair or eye candy of Donnie Darko.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s original 2.40:1 aspect ratio is presented in a very good high definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. The image quality is both vibrant and colorful, without any noticeable blemishes or compression artifacts. Black levels remained deep, dark, and consistent but there were some signs of edge halos, especially in well-lit outdoor scenes. Color balance is very good and the transfer does provide a sharp, film-like presentation that falls just a little short of better, three-dimensional reference discs. In some ways the transfer is a bit too good, as many of the movie’s less-than-stellar CGI and animation effects look pretty hokey. In listening to the running commentary, Kelly makes a point of saying how they had a very limited budget for some of the special effects shots (most of which were added after the notorious Cannes Film Festival screening), and I have to say it shows. A special effects shot of a floating ice cream truck near the end (don’t ask) is laughable, and a similar CGI image of something called a Mega-zeppelin looks like it was hand drawn onto the frame. The rare close-up shots of one or two characters speaking do boast a nice level of detail, however, and flesh tones all look natural and nicely-rendered. Overall, a good video presentation.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the TrueHD 5.1 track. Not that a lossless track doesn’t have its benefits, I just think I might be getting spoiled by the more aggressive and active TrueHD titles I’ve been sampling. For a movie that seems so chaotic and bombastic, it has a pretty anemic and unassertive soundtrack. Save for the occasional gunshots peppered here and there, the bulk of the movie is pretty much a talking-head ordeal, so it’s very much a center-channel heavy, dialogue-driven experience. There are a couple of big explosions thrown in to wake up the subwoofer, and the bigger crowd sequences add a bit of ambient sound through the rear channels, but this is one of those rare movies where I’m hard-pressed to remember any key directional effects or surround content. Even Moby’s original score seems to emanate mostly from the center and front channels, with only the slightest reverb effect filling out the rears. It also seemed to lack any consistent or deep bottom end and probably would have sounded the same through a compressed 5.1 or even a 2.0 audio track. Overall, a lackluster audio presentation.

The optional subtitles are in English SDH, English, French and Spanish.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

It’s good to see Sony has added a bit more bonus material to this BD release after a nearly bare-bones DVD edition they seemed to rush out earlier this year. Still, it doesn’t strike me as the complete package, especially given the absence of deleted scenes or outtakes that we know exist after Kelly cut the film by almost a half-hour in response to the poor reception at the Cannes Film Festival. Like Donnie Darko that was later rereleased in a reassembled “Director’s Cut,” I suspect we’ll see another edition of Southland Tales in the not-too-distant future.

What we do get for the first time is a feature-length running audio commentary track by writer/director Richard Kelly flying solo. Sigh. Let me put this as nicely as possible. This is one of the most pretentious and frustrating tracks I’ve ever had to sit through. It’s interesting to note that Kelly makes a point of saying he recorded the track on August 25, 2008 – well after the theatrical release of the film, indeed even after the DVD release had been out for months. So he’s painfully aware (although he never comes out and says it) that the film not only bombed in theaters, but also didn’t get much critical support, either. That being said, he remains obstinate and unwilling to explain a lot of plot points that just don’t make any sense. He also keeps repeating how some people will “get it” and others just won’t, and those familiar with the works of Philip K. Dick will certainly “get it.” Well, not only have I read Philip K. Dick, but I’ve also seen several good, comprehensible movies based on his works – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, and Minority Report, among them. So to be that dismissive and almost arrogant about your own film doesn’t fly with me. Ironically, he also keeps mentioning how they only had a $17 million budget and yet he’s still happy with the results. Of course, since the film has yet to even make back one- seventeenth of its cost, he may not have as much to play with next time around.

Next up is the prequel graphic novel titled Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga Graphic Novel, which offers an entire three-chapter back-story concocted by Kelly that tells about the events leading up to Boxer Santaros’ return from the desert. A nice, quick synopsis of the key events is actually presented in a graphic prologue to the film, so this isn’t required reading. While some of this was interesting, I found the mode of operation to be cumbersome and my BD player locked up after attempting to access it the first time out. It’s difficult to read some of the smaller panels of the pages – even on a large plasma screen – and while I applaud its inclusion, it’s something only serious fans or the very curious are going to want to plod through.

The lone featurette is the one ported over from the previous DVD edition titled USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland (33:47, 1080p), which is basically a standard EPK affair offering interviews with the cast and crew while on location. Richard Kelly is just as evasive and elusive as he is in his commentary track, even when answering people like cast member Will Sasso who asks what the film is about. Kelly dismissively says it’s a film about the end of the world and it’s a comedy; he then walks off. Oddly enough, many of those interviewed all seem to have a similar take on the material. Actor Curtis Armstrong (Risky Business, Better Off Dead) says pointblank that he didn’t understand the script after reading it and claims that’s what intrigued him about the project. Likewise, the always-amusing Jon Lovitz said he wasn’t sure what the movie was about, either, but he felt confident that writer/director Kelly would weave it all into a coherent film. The rest of the featurette goes into great detail about a couple of minor special effects like when one character is run over by a car and another has his hand severed. Never mind what the movie’s about, pray tell how did you hack that guy’s hand off?

There’s also an animated short film titled This is the Way the World Ends (9:11). Apart from its intriguing runtime, I’m not sure what this has to do with Southland Tales, let alone anything else. Granted, the title is repeated by several characters during the movie, but here we have two animated amoebas, floating around in some polluted ocean talking about how the Earth is dying. Seems like something Al Gore might have shown before An Inconvenient Truth.

The disc includes the standard Sony BD Promo along with trailers for Hancock, 21, and Casino Royale. There is also downloadable content for players that are BD Live enabled.

The 144-minute film is divided into sixteen chapters.

Final Thoughts

Despite his remarkable achievement with Donnie Darko, writer/director Richard Kelly’s much- anticipated follow-up is a convoluted and confusing mess. Although the phrase “the emperor has no clothes” may not apply, something along the lines of “the director has no film” certainly hits home. Meandering and disconnected, Southland Tales is a major disappointment. With a good video presentation, a mediocre audio presentation, and a decent but obviously incomplete selection of bonus material, this BD is only marginally recommended for the extremely curious. All others should seek out Donnie Darko.