Serenity cast robot8/2/2023 ![]() The burnout is played by a slurry, blurry Matthew McConaughey, chewing scenery as if the McConaissance were nothing more than a collective delusion. ![]() It’s rough enough at the start, when Serenity leads you to believe that it will follow the misadventures of a burnout fisherman named Baker Dill (!), who’s on a vain quest to catch an evasive giant tuna he calls “Justice” (oh boy). And that’s even before the emergence of a late-stage left-hand turn that throws the entire movie into twisted relief. Then again, that description hardly does justice to Serenity, a film so magnificently ill-conceived that it instantly earns a spot alongside I Know Who Killed Me and The Number 23 in the pantheon of great terrible movies. ![]() might call a “movie for grown-ups.” Writer-director Steven Knight should sleep soundly knowing that his latest isn’t just another gear in the ever-churning content turbine-it’s a wholly original creation, one that Knight has clearly put his heart and soul into. At a time when studios and streaming services are doubling down on sequels and reboots and endless rivers of interchangeable chum, it’s rare to see a movie like this one appear in theaters: a mid-budget thriller with a pedigreed cast that isn’t based on any existing I.P., the sort of project the A.A.R.P. Similarly, Clarke makes for a pretty cartoonishly evil antagonist - right down to his gold-laced shoes and belt - and Hounsou's devout character mostly functions as Baker's conscience, making him little more than a two-dimensional stereotype.Serenity certainly deserves an A for effort. Hathaway seems a bit more self-aware in her role as Serenity's femme fatale (as does Lane in her turn as an older temptress), but if anything that just highlights how regressive the film is when it comes to its portrayal of women. What makes McConaughey's performance odd is that he plays the character's entire arc with a straight face, even when he's saddled with some truly goofy lines of dialogue. The actor feels a bit out of his element in the early-going, but hits his stride when Baker transitions from being a grouchy, sweaty mess to seeing his world clearly for the first time and finally realizing the truth about his new life. ![]() In a film this bizarre, it's appropriate that McConaughey delivers one of his weirder performances to date. Meanwhile, the obvious metaphors in Knight's script become (if anything) even more ham-fisted than before. Even after the movie reveals what's really going on, it never becomes clear what the actual point of its story is. However, whereas the actor's "McConaughlogues" in that show either shed light on his character or tied into the larger themes of its narrative, his speeches here tend to feel aimless. This is also the portion of the movie where McConaughey begins to wax philosophical about himself and the lives of those around him, as though he's back playing Rust Cohle on True Detective. By the time the film enters its second half, it becomes apparent that Serenity's less interested in exploring the noir tropes it's drawing from and more invested in examining ideas about morality, the universe, and the very nature of human existence.
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