Director: Ari Aster

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Michael Ward, Austin Butler, Deidre O’Connell

Writer-director Ari Aster’s follow-up to the bold but self-indulgent and patience testing ‘Beau is Afraid’ is a state-of-the-nation COVID-era set satire/Western that aims high but feels too sprawling and unfocussed. A typically committed Joaquin Phoenix is Joe Cross, the sheriff of the titular fictional town in Mexico City. We are introduced to Joe quarrelling with a neighbouring local sheriff after Joe has entered his jurisdiction without wearing a mask. Cross insists that as an asthmatic he is unable to do so. His stubbornness attracts the ire of the town’s slick and very pro-mask local mayor Ted Garcia (Pascal, in not as prominent a role as the poster moots) who is up for re-election. Garcia is also attempting to sort out permits for an AI data centre that he promises locals will be good for the town. Townspeople worry however that it will affect the water supply. Joe lives with his eccentric boho housebound wife (Stone), who makes disturbing dolls that Joe tries to persuade his friends to buy, as well as Louise’s overbearing and mentally ill mother, Dawn (O’Connell). Louise has a history with Garcia which explains Joe’s enmity. As an act of revenge Joe decides to run his own, comedically inept and bonkers mayoral campaign. Then his manhandling of a protestor at a Black Lives Matter demonstration goes viral spelling more headaches for Joe and his loyal deputies. Several other narrative threads feature in the clutter including one with Austin Butler as Vernon, an ingratiatingly sinister cult leader. The exchanges between Phoenix and Pascal are mildly amusing when they should be rip-roaring showdowns, and the broad scattershot satire becomes wearing over the film’s excessive two-and-a-half-hour running time. And given recent political events, the script’s both sidedness, with the protestors depicted as self-righteous and just as self-serving as the authorities, feels ill-timed, quaint even.

David Willoughby

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