Sam Rockwell – The Magnificent 60s

In theory a cult film in the making. In reality, how is it even possible for a film to achieve cult status these days? Back in the day, there were a variety of routes. Reissue, for example, saved The Magnificent Seven (1960) from box office oblivion in the United States – but as a tool for building cult from a genuine revival wide release that’s gone. When was the last time you saw an arthouse event revival as epitomized by Metropolis (1927) or Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927)? Does anyone even run midnight screenings any more – the way The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) wormed its way into huge profit? Could a DVD release work its magic the way it did for box office flop The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

The “long tail” that kept movies in circulation for decades is long gone. How long do movies even survive on streaming? No streamer has the technology to literally keep thousands of movies available online for the time it would take for an underrated movie to pick up the head of steam necessary for reassessment.

For sure, this isn’t the greatest film ever made and it could certainly due with trimming, lop off the 15-20 minutes devoted to tedious exposition and cut down on the need to get reaction shots from each of its main characters any time anyone says something interesting. But it has certainly misfired at the box office, in part I guess because it was set up as Valentine’s Day counter programming but is so wacky that it didn’t stand a chance against the romantic box office powerhouse of Wuthering Heights.

Forget about the main storyline of AI taking over the world and concentrate on the other aspects which make this an enticing number. Its antecedents are appealing. For a start it draws on Groundhog Day (1993), The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), The Magnificent Seven (1960), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – twice I should add, once in technological rebellion and once in a version of the “star child”- the cover art from Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon, Interstellar (2014), Back to the Future (1985), reimagines the zombie movie if you imagine the zombies as a horde without the slime and teeth, and finishes with the kind of stinger that the best sci fi movies deliver – think the original Planet of the Apes (1968) or the original Carrie (1976).

Intrigued? You should be. Some of the concepts here are just terrific especially when it slips into flashback and we discover what kind of world the characters inhabit. School shootings are so common that the U.S. Government helps finance clones to replace your dead child. Dare switch off any teenager’s mobile phone and they come after you in a predatory pack. You can choose to live in virtual reality over the real world.

Someone being sent back from the future to save the world from apocalypse is a fairly straightforward sci fi trope. But this time, the threat emanates from a nine-year-old child. In any other picture, especially in this genre, you would just send a crack military outfit to eliminate the kid. But people here have principles. So instead The Man from the Future (Sam Rockwell), decked out like a homeless dude except with a bomb, has to recruit a team of individuals, most of whom you wouldn’t trust to form a community baseball team, from a diner.

So we’ve got grieving mother Susan (Juno Temple), lovelorn Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) decked out in a princess outfit who’s medically allergic to mobile phones, ineffective substitute teacher Mark (Michael Pena) and potential girlfriend Janet (Zazie Beets), and your standard grumpy guy Scott (Asim Chaudry). Their mission doesn’t look that complicated – they’ve hardly got to cover a mile to reach their destination – which is just as well because you wouldn’t trust any of them to get your back much less expect them to clamber over a fence. Not all are going to make it. The Man from the Future has done this before – 117 times it transpires – but never achieved his mission.

It does need to get quicker to the brilliant climax and the stinger scenes that follow. The truth vs reality vibe is a bit over complicated. And I doubt if anyone has been waiting with bated breath – that would be a nearly decade-long wait – for the latest effort from director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise).

Sam Rockwell (Argylle, 2024) is covered in a beard and all sorts of stuff which conceals all his annoying acting tics, Juno Temple (Roofman, 2025) has the most emotional part and Michael Pena the most baffled and Zazie Beets (Bullet Train, 2022), Haley Lu Richardson (Love at First Sight, 2024) and Asim Chaudry (People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan, 2021) do well and in his movie debut creepy kid Artie Wilkinson-Hunt is in the top bracket of creepy kids. Written by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters, 2020).

Not as wacky as it sounds, especially when all the apparently random themes start adding up and connect into terrifying logic.

It was much better than I expected. And probably the first potential cult film denied such status by the onset of streaming.

Kind of film that needs sold on word-of-mouth and a slow platform-release rather than being bundled out to fill the distribution gap. Let the audience sing its praises first before slinging it out in wide release. Because this is a definite audience-pleaser, a fun whodunit. Though a limiting factor might be that appeal may be restricted to those of a certain age familiar with The Mousetrap. I wouldn’t bet my last dollar, either, on modern young audiences even having a clue who Agatha Christie was, or responding to a picture set in dull, dull, Britain in a year -1953 – when there was a significantly more glorious event that might have suited better the average Downton Abbey moviegoer: the coronation of the recently-deceased Queen Elizabeth II.

Delightful pastiche on the detective story, too much to suggest it’s a piss-take on Knives Out or the latest big-screen veneration of Hercule Poirot, but it certainly has enough going for it even if none of those connections are eventually made. Certainly, there’s some sly humor in scoring points for mentioning, a la Murder on the Orient Express, that the initial murder could have been committed by all the suspects.

Basically, out of favor war hero and alcoholically-inclined cop Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) is saddled with rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) – two in-jokes right there, John Stalker being a very prominent British cop, playwright Tom Stoppard the author of The Real Inspector Hound – to investigate the death of Yank Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), in London to turn Agatha Christie’s famed play into a movie for real-life producer John Woolf (Reace Shearsmith) who made The African Queen (1951).

Virtually everyone associated with the play becomes a suspect. These include pompous playwright Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), the play’s petulant producer Petula “Chew” Spencer (Ruth Wilson), real-life actor Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) and even Agatha Christie (Shirley Henderson) is not above a bit of poisoning. Throw into the mix that the cops have assigned the bulk of their resources to tracking down the 10 Rillington Place serial killer – another in-joke, Attenborough playing the murderer in that movie.

One of the movie’s delights is that whereas both Stoppard and Stalker have considerable personal issues, we discover them in passing, and neither character makes a meal of them. Instead, their screen charisma works a treat, Stoppard dogged and the earnest Stalker inclined to jump the gun.

*Even the “all-star-cast” is a spoof on films like “Death on the Nile.” The title was a popular one, movies in big-screen or small using it in 1955, 1964, 1984, 1999 and 2006.*

The stage shenanigans are a hoot, puffed-up pride and ruthless machinations powering many of the sub-plots. There’s some pretty clever sleight-of-hand not to mention occasional cinematic avant-garde and there’s no shortage of laughs and that out-dated comedy fall-back – slapstick. The climax is particularly excellent, in part because it is a notion immediately discarded as the denouement of the proposed movie version of the play, one that succinctly critiques the differences between British and Hollywood approaches to movie-making.

Red herrings and cul-de-sacs abound, flashbacks remove any plot-holes, while managing to ram in a country-house finale takes some brio. And in among all the jokes, you might be surprised to find a serious point being made about reality vs fiction. Full marks to the virtually laugh-a-minute screenplay by Mark Chappell (The Rack Pack, 2016) and director Tom George in his movie debut who brilliantly shuffles the deck.

Dramatic heavyweight pair Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards, Outside Ebbing Missouri, 2017) and Saoirse Ronan (Mary, Queen of Scots, 2018) prove a double-act to cherish. In gentle comedic roles at odds with virtually their entire portfolios, a wise producer might already be sizing them up for a re-run. Everyone else gets to be bitchy/scheming/ruthless to their heart’s content and certainly in those categories Adrien Brody (The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014) and Ruth Wilson (His Dark Materials, 2019-2022) win hands-down. But spare a thought for excellent performances from David Oyelowo (The Bastard King, 2020), Reace Shearsmith (of League of Gentlemen TV fame), Lucian Msamati (The Bike Thief, 2020) as the imperturbable Max Mallowan, husband of the distinctly perturbed Agatha, played with venomous glee by Shirley Henderson (Greed, 2019).

I went to see it not expecting much at all and came out singing its praises. Definitely worth a whirl.

Tag: Sam Rockwell

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