Southland Tales

Southland Tales

2006

Directed by Richard Kelly

Southland Tales is a film that I have been wanting to see for a while. I really enjoyed Kelly's Donnie Darko, and wanted to see how this next film fared. While I think this film had great potential, I felt a little lost while watching it. I didn't feel like I connected to any of the characters in the film. I did like some of the ideas in the film... like the slow transition of the US into a police state and the fact that people needed visas to go from state to state.

I think that the main problem with the film is that it tried to include too much in one film. As much as I dislike the current movement of Hollywood to try to make everything into a trilogy or a franchise... I think this is one of those films that could have easily been split into two or three different films and the director could have had the sufficient time and space to tell his story.

Rustin Allison