The Reel Review
A lazy, incompetent sheriff in a small town in New Mexico during the first few months of the 2020 COVID pandemic finds his already precarious position in peril when a feud with the town’s mayor escalates. Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone star in this genre mashup of neo-Western, dark comedy and crime drama.
Writer/director Ari Aster (Midsommar, Beau is Afraid) again swings for the fences in this tsunami of despair, showcasing the worst in human behavior. None of the main characters in this film is likable, starting with Phoenix as the sheriff who refuses to wear a mask in public, much less enforce the state’s mask mandate. From the pandemic-induced surge in conspiracy theorists, mask and vaccine deniers, performative Black Lives Matters protesters, American gun obsession and social media charlatans (an excellently creepy Austin Butler), no one is spared. There is just so much unpredictable WTF-ery going on that it is overwhelming, which apparently is Aster’s point. America is a nation in chaos.
Is Eddington a feel-good movie? Absolutely not, as it shines an uncomfortable but deserving light on human selfishness, narcissism, corruption, nepotism, hypocrisy, stupidity, incompetence and racism. The strong performances by the scathing satire’s cast in the first half is diminished somewhat by an increasingly jarring and ridiculous finale and a bloated two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Aster has, however achieved something – a film that will almost certainly be as divisive as the current state of American politics.
REEL FACTS
• Ari Aster initially planned to make Eddington his directing debut but shelved it to make 2018’s Hereditary.
• Austin Butler replaced Christopher Abbott after Abbott dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with filming 2025’s Wolf Man.
• Truth or Consequences, New Mexico was the primary film location for Eddington with other scenes filmed in Albuquerque and Aster’s hometown of Santa Fe.
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