Mikey arrives in Texas City, Tex., a Gulf Coast oil-and-gas town, with not much more than the tank top on his back, $22 in his pocket and bruises on his face and torso.
Before long he is installed on Lil’s couch , using their modest yellow bungalow as a base of operations as he lays siege to Texas City by bicycle.
In a handful of early scenes in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket,” we learn quite a bit about this guy, who is played with antic, uninhibited verve by the onetime MTV V.J.
“The universe is on my side,” he marvels a bit later, after various schemes and scams appear to be coming to fruition.
The biases of the universe remain unknowable, but for viewers and critics the relevant questions are whether or to what extent the movie is on Mikey’s side.
You can make it through most of the film in a state of queasy, not entirely unpleasant ambivalence.
There are some who do business with him, some who have sex with him, and some who punch him, kick him, threaten him with murder or force him to run naked through the nighttime streets.
Her interest intensifies when she finds out about his work history, and he starts to see her as a porn star in the making, his ticket back to the big time.
In his previous movies, Baker has observed strivers and dreamers on the margins of respectability with an eye that could be prurient and skeptical, but also compassionate.
Mikey’s misadventures take place in the summer of 2016, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump accept the nominations of their parties and square off for November.
Nobody in the movie talks about politics, but the candidates’ voices and images leak from radios and television sets, creating a hazy aura of relevance.