sundown movie review

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

Now streaming on:

Is it a compliment or a slam to say that "Sundown" could be the saddest "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode ever? 

The protagonist, played by Tim Roth , is a creature of selfishness, the kind who can surely be found in well-to-do neighborhoods all over the world. We're not supposed to like him or even particularly understand where he's coming from, and after a certain point, viewers may find themselves laughing at how blithely he throws away not just things, but people who theoretically should mean everything to him. After an introduction like that, you may find it odd that a review would urge you not to read further till you've seen the movie, but "Sundown" is more dreadfully engrossing if you know nothing about the story going in. So: make your choice. 

Roth's character, Neal Bennett, is on vacation in Acapulco with his sister Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ), niece Alexa ( Albertine Kotting McMillan) and nephew Colin ( Samuel Bottomley ), in the lap of luxury, as it were. Then Alice gets a call informing them that their mother is gravely ill. The family cuts their vacation short, and on the way to the airport, Alice gets a second call telling her that their mother has died. 

The cherry on top of the misery sundae: when they arrive at the airline check-in counter, Neal shamefacedly says that he's left his passport back at the hotel. Distraught as the family is, they offer to stay at the airport and wait for him to fetch the passport so they can face the tragedy together, on a later flight. Neal assures them that it's better if they go on without him and let him catch up.

Then Neal gets into a cab and tells the driver: hotel . Not a particular hotel: any hotel. And his vacation continues, without the family. He drinks beer and sleeps on the beach. He hangs out in markets and meets a beautiful young woman and takes her back to his room and has sex with her. Days pass, then weeks. His texts and voicemail fill up. His sister wants to know where he is, and if he's OK. He does not respond. Yes, he's lost his mother—but so has his sister, and she isn't abandoning the family in time of need. What's going on here? A need to blow it all up? To reject the privileges accumulated over a lifetime, as other fictional characters, including some of Michelangelo Antonioni's bored rich folks, and Don Draper on "Mad Men," sometimes did?

We are belatedly informed that the siblings are fabulously wealthy, thanks to their co-ownership of pork-rending facilities (though Alice does most of the work, it seems). Around that point, things take a nasty turn, with the Bennetts seemingly being punished, or maybe being subjected to karmic payback. But the misfortune is staged in such a way that we can't be sure if it's the cosmos rearranging itself on the side of the workers and against capitalist piggishness or if the family just caught a string of bad breaks. 

In the greater scheme, it's preferable for a film to leave us unsure what to think about its message. Most (though not all) movies that go an agitprop direction are condescending, flat, and annoying, and make you wonder why the storytellers spent the time and money to make a drama rather than, say, renting a billboard. But if you go too far in the other direction, as I think this "Sundown" does, you leave the audience unsure as to what, exactly, the storytellers are trying to say about their people, their milieu, and their subject.

This in turn leads to the question of whether there's some larger purpose behind the enterprise, or if the filmmaker just enjoys composing impeccable frames with a jerk at the center of them, watching him do bad things, then punishing him and letting the audience off the hook by feeling as if some form of justice has been done. This film's portrayal of upper class white Europeans is hardcore-leftist in presentation, but the execution is bourgeois, like an old gangster film that ends with the gangster getting machine-gunned to death on the steps of the church whose teachings he used to mock.

"Sundown" is written and directed by Michel Franco , a Mexican filmmaker whose work is steeped in a kind of cool blank regard of suffering that can read as nihilism, and perhaps should be read that way, though it's hard to tell for sure. The filmmaker behind art-house horror shows set in the real world, such as " New Order " and "Daniel and Ana," as well as hard-edged social dramas like "Through the Eyes" and " Chronic " and the sexually explicit coming-of-age movie "After Lucia," he's been accused of exploitive imagery and scenarios even as he's been praised for going places that most movies don't dare go.

He's on record as being a fan of Michael Haneke (" Funny Games ," "Cache") and shares that director's affinity for treating people as the emotional equivalent of insects for a cruel boy to dismember, along with an icy, no-judgments tone that (deliberately?) makes the audience wonder if he really does have substantive things to say about the awfulness that he shows us, or if he's mainly there for the awfulness, and the gestures towards sociopolitical statements are mainly a pretext for transgressive images.

"Sundown" won't clear up any of those mysteries, such as they are. And even as the movie takes a slight turn into surrealism in its final third, and becomes more overtly political as it steams towards its ending, the sum is slight and obscure. At least the running time is brief, and the movie has the good sense to cast Tim Roth (also the star of "Chronic"). Few actors are better at conveying reptilian stillness and opacity, and encouraging us to wonder what on earth is going on behind those alert yet distant eyes, as well as the motivation behind the set of a character's mouth, which might be either a grimace or a smirk.

Now playing in select theaters.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Now playing

The Way We Speak

Robert Daniels

Peyton Robinson

Rule of Two Walls

Isaac feldberg.

Customs Frontline

Simon abrams.

Film Credits

Sundown (2022)

Tim Roth as Neil

Charlotte Gainsbourg as Alice

Iazua Larios as Bernice

Henry Goodman as Richard

Albertine Kotting as Alexa

Samuel Bottomley as Colin

• Michel Franco

Director of Photography

• Óscar Figueroa

Latest blog posts

A Woman Without Peers: Gena Rowlands (1930-2024)

The Needle Drop Sessions: Pump Up the Volume & Untamed Heart

Locarno Film Festival 2024: Youth (Hard Times), Transamazonia, Moon

Thumbnails 8/15/24: Six Must-Reads You Don’t Want To Miss This Week

Review: Tim Roth excels at quiet intensity in Michel Franco’s unsettling drama ‘Sundown’

• Copy Link URL Copied!

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

There’s a cryptic chill in the hot restfulness of Michel Franco’s Acapulco-set “Sundown,” in which Tim Roth plays a wealthy, aloof vacationer named Neil Bennett. It’s another stark, elliptical meditation on extreme detachment from a Mexican filmmaker whose coiled, sometimes violent dramas about upper-class family dysfunction (“After Lucia,” “New Order” ) have earned him comparisons with provocateurs like Michael Haneke .

From the opening shot of caught fish gasping their last breath in the tropical heat, followed by Roth on a boat in a trancelike stare while a young man and woman (Samuel Bottomley, Albertine Kotting McMillan) frolic in the ocean before him, we can sense there’s an unspoken dissatisfaction beneath the lazy smiles of the Bennett family’s luxury vacation. Then Alice Bennett ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ) — whose brittle demeanor suggests somebody who struggles to relax — gets a distressing phone call from home, and the foursome’s trip is abruptly ended.

When Neil declares at the airport that he’s left his passport behind, however, he insists the other three go back to England without him and that he’ll catch the next flight. But instead of going back to their swanky resort, he tells his hustling taxi driver Jorge (Jesús Godínez) to take him to any hotel, where he checks into a bare-bones room, and a glimpse inside his bag reveals his passport. He then ambles over to a buzzy public beach, parks himself in a plastic chair facing the water and drinks beers and eats seafood while the surf, sun and the sounds of beachgoers lap at his consciousness. It becomes a daily ritual, and after a while, he stops taking the increasingly concerned phone calls from Alice, until she takes drastic measures to get Neil involved in their lives again.

It’s risky to put so emotionally disengaged a character at the center of a suspense film, but Roth is no ordinary actor, effortlessly bringing a mysterious heft to what looks like someone avoiding something but also giving in to something. Roth’s always been equally powerful with inexpressive roles as the showier, volatile ones, and this being his second quietly intense portrayal for Franco — the first being 2015’s “Chronic,” in which he played a dedicated, depressed nurse — indicates a distinct, fertile director-actor bond one hopes will continue.

Franco’s tightly controlled, vaguely sinister scenario — not unlike something Muriel Spark or Georges Simenon might have conjured up — doles information out gradually, allowing us to assume at first the kind of strained relationship Alice and Neil have, when in reality it’s something else. (Gainsbourg’s concise portrait of intimate frustration, like streaks of color on a blank slate, is marvelously effective.)

We’re also led to believe there’s something possibly unseemly in Neil’s taking up with a beautiful local kiosk worker named Berenice (Iazua Larios), but their fling is also cozily amorous in a way that seems to bring a measure of peace and pleasure to them both. That it nevertheless feels impermanent is part of the subtle unease Franco achieves, helped by the watchful but reserved, and at times sly, framing of Yves Cape’s camerawork.

Getting a read on Neil’s melancholic impassivity becomes especially tension-filled when Franco introduces a couple of shocking, violent incidents that juice “Sundown” beyond its protagonist’s initial deception, disrupting the initial depiction of sun-baked Acapulco as an escape and nudging the already simmering theme of mortality to the forefront. Neil’s languid estrangement from matters of family importance is one prism through which to view these turns, but perhaps the more revealing is his curious indifference in general to twists of fate, or how people might react to his there-not-there behavior.

In one sense, “Sundown” is a bleak window into the corrosive effect wealth and privilege have on relationships and the psyche, and even with a final reveal that fills in some of why Neil is the way he is, it still doesn’t feel that explanatory. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for this taut, confidently unsettling film.

'Sundown'

Rated: R, for sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes Playing: Starts Jan. 28, Alamo Drafthouse, downtown Los Angeles; The Landmark, West Los Angeles; AMC Sunset 5, West Hollywood

More to Read

Review: In ‘Great Absence,’ a son puzzles out the dad he misunderstood, now fading into dementia

July 26, 2024

Review: In ‘Last Summer,’ an illicit relationship takes root in all its messy provocation

June 28, 2024

Review: In sun-dappled ‘Summer Solstice,’ old frictions re-emerge, as does a belated independence

June 21, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Entertainment & Arts

French star Alain Delon, whose films included ‘Purple Noon’ and ‘La Piscine,’ dies at 88

Kevin Spacey refuses to leave his Baltimore mansion after foreclosure sale

Aug. 16, 2024

‘The Crow’ original soundtrack sketched a musical alternative in time

Adam Epstein, Tony-winning producer, dies at 49. Brother says he packed in 100 years of living

Aug. 15, 2024

‘Sundown’ Review: What Is Tim Roth Doing in Acapulco? The Answer May Surprise You

Michel Franco reteams with his ‘Chronic’ star for another tough contemporary drama, this time slyly counting on viewer prejudices to shape the experience.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The Union’ Review: Old Friends Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry Reunite in a Middling Spy Movie 3 days ago
• Gena Rowlands Remembered: How ‘A Woman Under the Influence’ Transformed the Craft of Screen Acting 3 days ago
• ‘Jackpot!’ Review: The Lottery Plot’s Preposterous, but Awkwafina and John Cena Are a Winning Combo 3 days ago

In the span of a year when everyone’s been on edge, prolific Mexican director Michel Franco managed to nuke our comfort zones not once, but twice, delivering separate provocations at back-to-back editions of the Venice Film Festival . In 2020, he won the Silver Lion for powder-keg thriller “New Order,” and now, he returns with the relatively understated — but still shocking — “Sundown.” While both are icy examinations of violence, inequality and explosive class conflict in contemporary Mexico, Franco could hardly be accused of repeating himself. Where “New Order” was in-your-face, “Sundown” returns to the controversial auteur’s earlier, arm’s-length approach.

The movie unfolds entirely in Acapulco, where a man ( Tim Roth ), a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and two grown “kids” (Albertine Kotting McMillan and Samuel Bottomley, who appear to be just shy of drinking age) are shown consuming: They swim; they sail; they eat out at posh restaurants where the waiter brings out the steaks for your approval before cooking them. These four are a family, but perhaps not in the way audiences might think. If you’re confused by how they relate, or why they behave as they do, rest assured, that’s Franco’s intention.

Related Stories

Bungie layoffs highlight post-m&a issues for gaming industry as its unions react, britney spears biopic film set at universal with 'wicked' director jon m. chu.

The high-minded director’s most successful film to date, conceptually speaking, “Sundown” is an intricate, unconventional puzzle — a mystery, complete with murder, in which the solution isn’t nearly so important as the process of putting it all together. Franco is deliberately stingy with details early on, confident that viewers will leap to their own conclusions, and in so doing, their personal prejudices (a loaded term but not necessarily a negative one) will shape how they view the situation. As more information comes out over the movie’s short 83-minute running time, audiences will not only understand the story better but ideally themselves as well, recognizing how false assumptions may have affected their initial reading of certain elements.

Popular on Variety

Take the first twist: The vacation is going fine until Alice Bennett (Gainsbourg) receives a call. From the little we gather, it seems as if her mother has been rushed to the hospital. Alice insists that everyone pack and head to the airport, receiving an update en route that devastates her. She passes the phone to Neil Bennett (Roth), who isn’t nearly as upset by the news. When they get to the check-in counter, Neil “realizes” that he has forgotten his passport, telling the others to go ahead. Then he hails a cab and takes it to a cheap hotel, thereby extending his vacation.

Roughly an hour later — a couple weeks in story time — Neil is stuck behind bars, and a representative from the British consulate poses the proverbial million-dollar question: “Why didn’t you go home for your mother’s funeral?” Unpack the consul rep’s wording carefully, and at least one connection becomes clear. But the point remains: What kind of man lets his family handle such an ordeal on their own?

In the interim (and it’s important not to reveal too much here), Neil has been spending his days at the beach, drinking Dos Equis and soaking up the sun. He makes friends with the busboys and makes love to Berenice (Iazua Larios), a local shopkeeper whose spirit seems a million times lighter than whatever weight Neil is carrying on his shoulders. How should we feel about his behavior? As in all six of his previous films, Franco withholds judgment, but this time, he encourages us to fall for the most superficial of stereotypes, then obliges us to reconsider as new intel comes in.

While nearly every filmmaker working today is trying, at some level, to create a pleasant experience for audiences, Franco is committed to challenging them. “Sundown” is no exception: The director’s mission is to throttle us out of our comfort zones, which he does by downplaying the more melodramatic aspects of his stories (putting him in the company of Michael Haneke and Ruben Östlund), using a style certain to frustrate and divide.

Over the years, Franco has come to recognize a certain elitism among the film-fest and art-house crowds that turn out for his movies, and he plays our presumed privilege to his advantage here — weaponizing our concern, as it were. Do we empathize with the Bennetts? When a character is shot dead mere feet from Neil on the beach, how do we react? What does that say about us?

As the Bennetts — millionaire heirs to a slaughterhouse fortune and attractive targets for gang scouts known as halcones (“hawks”)  — Roth and Gainsbourg deliver performances at opposite ends of the spectrum. Neil comes across nihilistically detached, whereas Alice is histrionic. He’s a passive zombie. She screams; she sobs; she makes proactive decisions. She also calls and texts constantly. What would she think if she could see what we do? We’ll soon find out, but again, she knows things that we don’t, and vice versa. Their lack of healthy communication skills is one of the film’s themes.

Perhaps Franco could be accused of the same, but there’s a difference between ambiguity and confusion, and the director is aiming for the former. This far into his career, working in a consistently withholding register, he understands that audiences project themselves in the vast spaces between clear answers — one reason so much depends on the first viewing. Yes, “Sundown” is a mystery, but it’s also a Rorschach test. No two people will see the film the same way.

Reviewed online, Sept. 4, 2021. (In Venice, Toronto film festivals.) Running time: 83 MIN.

• Production: (Mexico-France-Sweden) A Teorema production, in co-production with Luxbox, Commonground Pictures, Film I Väst, with the support of Eficine - Producción. (World sales: The Match Factory, Cologne.) Producers: Michel Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, Cristina Velasco L. Co-producers: Jonas Kellagher, Caroline Ljungberg, Hédi Zardi, Fiorella Moretti. Executive producers: Tim Roth, Lorenzo Vigas.
• Crew: Director, writer: Michel Franco. Camera: Yves Cape. Editors: Oscar Figueroa Jara, Michel Franco.
• With: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley, Jesús Godines. (English, Spanish dialogue)

More from Variety

Guy ritchie’s ‘the gentlemen’ renewed for season 2 at netflix, ai content licensing deals with publishers: complete updated index, with raunchy new netflix movie ‘incoming,’ dave and john chernin are trying to bring back the kind of r-rated comedies hollywood stopped making, mark duplass-created coming-of-age series ‘penelope’ sets september netflix premiere, content owner lawsuits against ai companies: complete updated index, netflix, google team-up lets ‘emily in paris’ fans shop for her clothes, more from our brands, tammy duckworth: trump is ‘despicable’ for denigrating veterans, introducing, frédéric panaiotis – champagne’s renaissance man, nfl to meet again on private equity on aug. 27 in minneapolis, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, homicide: life on the street finally gets streaming premiere — find out where and when.

Cookie policy

‘Sundown’ is a Devastating and Honest Probe of Life with Grief

Tim Roth delivers a complex, superb performance in the latest from writer-director Michel Franco.

Published January 24, 2022 Movies , Reviews By Will DiGravio Disclaimer When you purchase through affiliate links on our site, we may earn a commission.

With his latest movie, Sundown , writer-director Michel Franco ( After Lucia , New Order ), delivers a fearlessly honest take on grief, love, and the human condition. The drama probes deep and at times devastating questions about familial relationships that complicate notions of what we do and do not owe one another in the face of tragedy.

Tim Roth , in a typically splendid performance, plays a British man named Neil, who vacations in Acapulco with his sister Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ) and her two children. The movie begins with the four lounging on the beach, sipping alcohol at an expensive resort. In the little time we get to spend with Alice, we see her preoccupied with an impulse to work. The children playfully bring Alice away from her phone, urging her to be more present and play games.

On the surface, Roth appears more present in some ways. Emails and work calls seem to be nowhere on his radar, for example. Yet he feels off. He is passive and aloof. His body may be there, but his mind is elsewhere.

Their trip is soon cut short after the family learns Alice and Neil’s mother has died. Just as they arrive at the airport and prepare to walk through customs, Neil says he forgot his passport at the resort. He tells them to go on without him. He will get the next flight.

But instead, Neil checks himself into a cheap hotel by the beach. He decides to stay in Mexico. Indefinitely. The movie tells us very little about his thinking or reasoning. The questions raised by his sudden abandonment are never fully answered. We may only infer if we feel so inclined.

Sundown captures the sounds of Acapulco: the indiscernible chatter of beachgoers, the clink of glasses, the waves. Neil, for his part, hardly talks. We hear what the character hears as he drinks, lounges, and eats by the beach. Days or weeks may be passing. Eventually, Neil falls in love with a local shopkeeper, Bernice ( Iazua Larios ). The two hardly talk. And we learn far too little about Bernice. Their relationship feels more physical than verbal, as it relates to both sex and the more general desire for companionship.

Among the central tensions of the movie is the one between Franco and his audience. The filmmaker does not relent in his decision to provide little to no explanation for Neil’s actions. There is no grand monologue. No inner struggle makes its way to Neil’s lips, for example, nor does one play out across his face. Instead, he just keeps living. He gets lost in the repetitions of his new, and in some ways simpler, life in Acapulco. Thus, the interplay is between what we think as we watch and what we think Neil thinks as he lives.

Franco leaves the audience to grapple with Neil’s moral complexities, guiding us nowhere. We live in the moral gray area of Neil’s actions. There are times when we cannot believe his selfishness. And at other moments, we empathize with his loss and mental state — is he not allowed to grieve and exist in his own way?

The subtleties of Roth’s performance seamlessly walk this tightrope. We may experience a range of emotions with the movie but are never bored, even during many of its slowest moments. As Neil just continues to drink, and sit, and make love, and walk around, Sundown  can be funny. But there’s a sadness to the whole ordeal that never wanes.

As time passes by, we learn more about Neil’s life. He has no other immediate family. He loves his niece and nephew very much. And he is the co-heir to a sizable fortune and his family’s meatpacking empire. As a result, all of this makes Neil’s decision more complex.

His class opens a window into how and for whom society allows room for introspection and grief. Only a person of means could do what Neil does. The time, space, and energy to reflect and embody one’s own mind is a privilege few can afford. Modern life makes little room for such simple needs. Neil’s unfettered access to wealth, for instance, gives him a rare chance to tap into his own humanity in his way. And while we cannot ignore his selfishness, there’s a part of us that years for this freedom too.

We feel the presence of Neil’s gender throughout the whole ordeal. His decision to just walk away and do as he pleases feels endlessly masculine. He leaves his sister alone to bury their mother and run the businesses. If he loves them so much, why just abandon him? No easy answer can be found. His actions are simultaneously infuriating and deeply sad.

By the movie’s end, more tragedy strikes. We get a partial explanation for Neil’s behavior. But it doesn’t make us feel any better. Instead, we are left grappling with the nature of time itself. How do we spend the years we have on Earth? Do we owe anyone our time? Or is it ultimately all our own?

What  Sundown  makes clear is that the answers to these questions may vary depending on the person and circumstance. The inevitable fact, though, is that each choice has a consequence, good or bad. And intention aside, we will live with them for the remainder of the time we have left, no matter where we go.

Sundown hits theaters in the United States on January 28, 2022.

Tagged with: Michel Franco

Will DiGravio

Potentially Relevant Content ↓

‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ Finds Laughs and Pain After College

More to Read ↓

‘When You Finish Saving the World’ Wants You Out of Your Head

‘Sundown’ Film Review: Tim Roth Is an Enigma in Riveting and Banal Mexican Drama

Director Michel Franco lets his story unfold incrementally and mysteriously

This review of “Sundown” first published on Sept. 5, 2021, after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

In “Sundown,” his latest examination of how his country’s economic and social tensions sometimes explode, Mexican director Michel Franco takes a cold-eyed stare at his characters, even as the Acapulco sun beats down on them.

In the film that premiered last fall at the Venice Film Festival, Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg play British tourists holidaying in a gorgeous Banyan Tree resort, accompanied by two late-teen or early 20s kids named Alexa and Colin. They swim and eat and lounge around, getting served margaritas by their private pool, venturing out to eat dinner or watch a cliff-diving exhibition in which local men risk their lives for the visiting galleries before passing a hat for donations.

Gainsbourg is chided by the kids for always being on her phone working, until it rings with some terrible news which means they have to leave immediately. Gainsbourg squeals in pain on hearing the news, then hands the phone to Roth to deal with it by talking to a man called Richard who will “sort things out”.

After that, I don’t really want to tell you much more, except that Franco lets his story unfold incrementally and mysteriously, like a fisherman slowly reeling his catch out of the water.

His camera is blank, distant and so is Roth’s character, Neil, a taciturn, unreadable, unbothered chap whose motivation we will spend the rest of the movie trying to piece together, using every scrap of information to form a bigger picture.

The detached calm of the camerawork will be punctured by sudden outbursts of violence, sometimes physical but also emotional. The viewer remains taut and on edge, constantly scanning the wide frame of the composition for clues, on the lookout for what might happen next. I guess that’s how tourists are told to be in Acapulco.

To reveal almost any of what happens – or has happened – would be some kind of spoiler. But it would be a stretch to tell you to relax, that all will be revealed, because it won’t, not everything. Franco presents us with a puzzle, perhaps attempting to reflect the many impulses, divisions and complexities in how Mexico functions, especially in a tourist enclave such as Acapulco. “Is it safe?” Gainsbourg asks anxiously.

Roth, unconcerned, is particularly good here. If we can barely read Neil’s thoughts, Roth’s physical performance is floppy and loose-limbed, giving Neil an unhurried trudge and a long face that’s hanging on to its bones enough to form the expression of someone who’s encountered a bad smell. He moves with a graceless ease, so relaxed in his surroundings he’s practically supine. In contrast, Gainsbourg is all angles and restless energy.

If we can’t fathom Neil’s actions and reactions, he looks perfectly unruffled in whatever he’s doing, hardly communicating with any locals (he speaks not a word of Spanish and mostly just says things like, “OK” and “It’s fine”) and coming across as disinterested as the camera that’s tracking him. Neil gets through a lot of beer, though nothing seems to give him much pleasure.

We wonder if it’s existential ennui or a moral alienation that’s afflicting him. Or could it be something mental or physical, a condition we can’t see that makes him so passive and uncommitted? It’s not even clear if he really is miserable or if Neil’s always been a bit like this.

I’m being as opaque as Neil, which is ironic given the cool clarity of Yves Cape’s pin-sharp cinematography. You can see why Franco has earned comparisons with Michael Haneke, the director for whom Roth starred in the 2007 shot-for-shot American remake of his Austrian home invasion chiller, “Funny Games.”

“Sundown” is perhaps closer to “Code Unknown” or “Hidden” in the way threat simmers in the air but is never signaled — no minor notes approaching on an accompanying score, the only music coming from passing mariachis on the beach or from a beautiful singer in a restaurant. And in the family holiday dynamic, I was also reminded of Ruben Ostlund’s “Force Majeure,” without the ski boots.

With Roth and Gainsbourg, the film has every chance for good exposure, but “Sundown” is only a short film, just about making it over 80 minutes, every second of which manages to be simultaneously riveting and banal.

Yet its intensity burns like the sun which makes Neil’s skin blister, peeling off a layer we hope might reveal more. Franco is scratching away at the surface, too, making the sort of movie you come away from with questions, wondering if you’d blinked and missed something.

Sundown review: Tim Roth is a wealthy tourist adrift in a sea of luxury and violence in Mexico's Acapulco

In Roberto Bolaño's 1997 short story Last Evenings on Earth, the narrator – a cipher for the acclaimed Chilean author himself – travels with his father to Acapulco. It is a road tale of sorts, set amidst "the days of grace", Bolaño writes: a hazy melange of roadside diners, seafood platters, and tequila shots enjoyed poolside in the Mexican beach town.

And yet there's a thin film of grime muddying the proceedings. From within the trappings of vacation, something sinister emerges – a barely concealed paranoia embedded into each of the narrator's twitchy observations which, by the story's end, has manifested itself in real-life horror.

More than two decades on, Sundown – the latest feature from Mexican director Michel Franco (New Order) – feels like the spiritual successor to Bolaño's saga of sunlight and suspicion.

It, too, is set in Acapulco, where we meet an ultra-wealthy British family whiling away their summer, yachting and feasting and napping.

They are adult siblings Neil (Tim Roth) and Alice Bennett (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with Alice's teenage children in tow (Albertine Kotting McMillan and Samuel Bottomley).

Beyond their resort, there is not a blip on the horizon, the sunset so pastel and formless it might as well be painted.

All is quiet. Barely a word passes their lips as they lie, shaded and motionless, in between margaritas and massages delivered by local staff – the invisible foot soldiers lubricating the Bennetts' picture-perfect sojourn.

Suddenly, a cataclysm: a phone call ruptures the idyll. Alice's mother has died unexpectedly, and her noodly nonchalance snaps taut as she marshalls the family, through tears, to the airport for a last-minute flight back to the UK.

Amidst the chaos, it's easy to forget that the deceased is, in fact, Neil's mother too – so unmoved is he.

At the check-in desk, he half-heartedly fumbles through what is clearly a lie: "I don't have my passport," he stammers, all but forcing the others to carry on without him. "I left it at the hotel."

It is easy to imagine Sundown, here, becoming a satire of the super-rich – the sort favoured lately by HBO series The White Lotus , or this year's Palme d'Or winner Triangle of Sadness, where moneyed, egocentric holidayers expose their ugly disconnection from, well, everyone else.

Franco, though, opts for a more distant approach, his camera as affectless as its subject. Neil traipses out of the airport and straight into a taxi, where he asks for a hotel – any hotel.

Before long, his strategy becomes clear: having successfully sloughed off his filial duties, he embarks on his own bachelor's getaway. Bliss might be little more than an illusion, but it's one he intends to reside in permanently.

He lets his sister's increasingly aggrieved voicemails play out, then throws his phone in a drawer like a dirty secret. Meanwhile, he's living la vida bloke-a, sinking beer after beer at the beach metres away from his new digs: a seedy room in a tourist trap, a far cry from the gleaming luxuries of earlier.

Roth, of course, is typically game, leaning into the wry absurdity of it all. He has no shortage of slimeballs to his credit – from his wily undercover cop in Reservoir Dogs to the self-obsessed screenwriter in 2021's Bergman Island. His previous collaboration with Franco, 2015's Chronic, saw him play an ethically ambiguous nurse fuelling an elderly patient's pornography addiction.

Neil, however, might be his trickiest role to date: a free radical operating under the logic of total chaos, with zero attachment to anything – or anyone – around him.

It's best summed up by the film's original title, Driftwood . Roth doesn't so much walk as he floats across the frame, buoyed by little more than inertia. He betrays precious little, remaining expressionless for the majority of Sundown's duration, even in the face of lust or brutality.

A casual romance that Neil strikes up with a beachside vendor named Berenice (the enchanting Iazua Larios) momentarily punctures the blur of sand and sweat. So does a drive-by shooting on the shore – a nod to the gang violence looming behind Acapulco, so rampant that the city is known as Mexico's murder capital – though Neil conjures up only cursory curiosity, gazing at the bloody body as if it were a portrait at an art gallery.

Indeed, these images slip away as quickly as they appear. Like Bolaño, Franco sublimates the extreme under a layer of calculated insouciance, such that everything resembles a half-remembered dream.

Class warfare, gentrification, and unbridled privilege are all within Franco's aim, but it is a testament to his subtlety that he never exploits them for cheap sympathy, instead leaving them to ripple silently beneath the surface.

At times, Sundown can feel like a test of patience. The camera peers again and again into the wide blue yonder, the harsh glare of sunlight burning all that it touches.

Roth certainly gets ruddier as Neil's glory days stretch on endlessly. How much of this impenetrable, insufferable character can we possibly stomach?

Franco, to this end, attempts a vague explanation for Neil's actions (or lack thereof) towards the film's conclusion. The pace picks up as we're bundled into a speeding car, a jail cell, then a hospital room, glimpsing – for the first time – some context to Neil's inherited wealth and its associated intrigue.

Yet it pales in comparison to the grotesque character study we have witnessed thus far.

Like an urgent phone call on a holiday, it rouses us from an anaesthetised spell.

Perhaps it is because we have grown accustomed to the pleasantly slumbering rhythm of Sundown that this final act, adhering to more traditional narrative tensions, feels out of step.

We might even miss the blankly apathetic Neil, free of any motivation or inhibition.

"What the fuck is going on?" Alice shrieks at her unresponsive brother earlier in the film. "What are you doing?"

The beauty lies in the mystery – the supreme power of a character who raises only questions, and a filmmaker who provides scant solutions.

Sundown is in cinemas from July 7.

• X (formerly Twitter)

Related Stories

Queer drama about teen male friendship wins $60,000 sydney film festival prize.

A young widow is harassed by a monstrous parade of men in Alex Garland’s creepy horror film Men

Benediction is a moving tale of queer longing set against the backdrop of WWI, starring Jack Lowden

• Arts, Culture and Entertainment
• Film (Arts and Entertainment)
• Mystery Films

Sundown Review: Tim Roth Abandons His Life In This Chilling Slow Burn [TIFF 2021]

The sun burns bright in Acapulco, where a group of Brits is away on lazy, lounging holiday. The group consists of adults Neil (Tim Roth) and Allison (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and youthful – perhaps somewhere in their 20s, or maybe younger, it's never specified – Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley). They swim, they drink, they play games. And when she thinks no one is looking, Allison sneaks away to check her work email, unable to fully embrace the vacation spirit.

She won't have much of a chance to do so, anyway, because a phone call alerts her that her mother has gone into the hospital. The group decides to cut the vacation short to return home, but before they even get to the airport another call comes in announcing Allison's mother has died.

In these opening moments, writer-director Michel Franco wants us to make assumptions. The way these scenes unfold, it would be logical to assume that Neil and Allison are a couple and Alexa and Colin are their children. But while these people are indeed a family, it's not that simple. There's more going on here, and there's more going on in nearly every moment of "Sundown," a genuinely chilling movie that just happens to take place in bright, abundant sunshine.

When the family gets to the airport, Neil reveals he's forgotten his passport just as their plane is about to take off. Allison wants to catch another plane, but she's so distraught over her mother's death that Neil and the kids both insist Allison, Alexa, and Colin take this flight, and Neil will catch another after he returns to the resort to retrieve his passport. It's here where Franco starts to reveal some of his cards. Neil leaves the airport and, rather than return to the resort, asks to be taken to a hotel – an indication that he was lying and he didn't forget his passport at all.

At his new hotel, Neil proceeds to head to the beach, talk to some locals, and meet a beautiful younger local woman, Berenice (Iazua Larios). The two fall into a love affair pretty quickly, spending ample time together either on the beach, in bed, or in the shower. All the while, Allison keeps calling, wondering where Neil is and when he's coming home. He assures her he's working on it, lying that he was unable to find his passport at the resort and is just waiting for the American consulate to sort things out.

A Blank Mask

Roth is a blank mask here; an impenetrable fortress of a man. The actor plays Neil in such a unique still, quiet way that it's nearly impossible to get a read on him. And that's the point. What is Neil thinking? Why isn't he returning home? Does he even have a plan? It takes a lot of work to play a character so closed-off, so vacant, and Roth is sensational.

Neil's rouse quickly evaporates when Allison returns to Acapulco. She's flabbergasted by Neil's actions, at one point yelling, "What are you doing ?" It's a good question, and "Sundown" is in no hurry to answer it. Little by little, like a leaky faucet slowly dripping beads of water, details are revealed, and even then, we still don't have all the answers.

The genius of "Sundown" is how little it tells us while keeping us glued to what we're seeing. The mystery makes us hang on every moment, every line, no matter how simple. A one-word answer is suddenly loaded with weight. A silent glance says a million different things. And then the violence starts. There are multiple occasions where, seemingly out of nowhere, sudden bursts of shocking violence erupt, featuring gunfire that's been mixed to sound as if it's a massive explosion. It jolts us from the stillness and leaves us shaken.

Whenever I say something like "The less you know about this movie, the better it will be" in a review, I feel like it's a cop-out, like I'm not doing my job. But the fact is that there are some movies that play best when you have as little information as possible, and "Sundown" is one of them. All you need to know is that Franco has supreme control over what he's doing here, guiding us along by the hand towards destinations, and answers, unknown. Even when you think you know all the answers, "Sundown" will still leave you unsure, still guessing, haunted by all that was left unspoken.

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

• Beginner’s Guides
• Reflections
• Soundtracks

In Twist-Filled Drama 'Sundown,' Tim Roth Reveals His Shadow Self

This vacation turns south fast.

Where to watch: ‘Sundown’ is now playing in select theaters and available to rent on Digital Platforms.

When it first begins, Sundown slows you down to its wonderfully relaxing, worry-free vacation time. The sight of Tim Roth endlessly lounging in a luxurious resort overlooking a beautiful Mexican coastline had me enjoying every gorgeously serene and sun-drenched moment (and made me remember his other vacation film, 2021’s Bergman Island ). Then, Sundown ‘s darker story begins to unfold, and the shadows begin to loom large. Soon enough, I also remembered the other side of the fantasy that vacations offer: escaping from your current circumstances, and yourself.

Related: In ‘Bergman Island,’ An Artist Couple Confront Their Love on the Coast

Unless anybody spoils the story for you (don’t worry, I’ll spare you any overly- revelatory details here), you’ll have absolutely no idea what to expect in this twist-filled, thrilling drama. Heading into Sundown as blind as possible really will make for the best viewing experience. Although even I knew a tad more than I would’ve liked to have known before going in, I was still entirely unprepared for what Sundown  had in store.

Written and directed by Michel Franco  (2020’s New Order ), Sundown  is a slow-burn film that follows Neil ( Tim Roth ) on vacation in Mexico with his family, Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ), Alexa ( Albertine Kotting McMillan ), and Colin ( Samuel Bottomley ). When an unexpected emergency summons them all back home to London, the family must cut their trip short and hurry to the airport. It’s a tense moment, made even more heart-dropping when Neil realizes that he’s forgotten his passport back at the hotel. Unable to join them on the flight and now separated from his family, he hops into a taxi. When the driver asks where he’s headed–and it’s here where the film gets interesting– Neil simply requests to be taken to a hotel– any  hotel.

Puzzled, we’re left trying to make sense of what’s going on in Neil’s head by studying his calm demeanor and blank, expressionless stares (the film definitely hints that something’s on his mind, with shots of him staring vacantly into the ocean and pools). Neil proceeds to aimlessly walkabout in his flip-flops, having beers on the beach, and even meeting a local, Berenice ( Iazua Larios ). While Alice continues to try to contact him, Neil continues to deceive and avoid her calls. We’re now fully only along for this mysterious ride, and the  Sundown only dials up the heat from there.

Writer-director Michel Franco patiently divulges every piece of new information, which ratchets up the suspense in every scene. Neil’s avoidance really gets under your skin–a cinematic sunburn–when you consider how easy it would be for any one of us to do exactly that. We’ve all had fantasies where we imagine leaving our old lives behind, impulsively staying on that never-ending vacation. Sometimes it’s in the pursuit of enjoying the pleasures that the world has to offer, other times it’s for deeper, more twisted and complex reasons. Like avoiding sinister truths that we can only attempt to outrun for so long.

Franco teases out the rest of Neil’s larger story so well, and especially in regards to how he shoots the film. Yves Cape ‘s (2012’s Holy Motors ) beautiful cinematography consists of widely framed shots, immersing and hiding Neil in his surroundings. The enduring images in Sundown are of Neil slumped over in various lounge chairs, staring vacantly into large bodies of water (the ocean, a hotel pool, it makes no difference). Also, from behind, in three-quarter, and side-profile shots (there is always a side of him we’re not seeing). Franco uses the idea of the sun and the shadow to further symbolize Neil’s internally conflicted state. Neil stays mostly in the shadows of his hotel room or on the beach, except for a sprinkling of moments where he’s head-on in the scorching sunlight.

Tim Roth is truly exceptional here. As Neil, Roth gives a mostly quiet, internal, and understated performance. The longer Neil remains unwaveringly relaxed under these distressing times, the tension grows to wildly unexpected new heights. We eventually learn about Neil’s history and his family’s global significance as an affluent business, which reveals Neil’s strange behavior. With Sundown , Roth continues to re-emerge onto the film scene as an unsettling, pathological figure (look for him as an unnerving villain in Resurrection , which premiered at Sundance this year). Just by sipping a beer, or even while doing nothing, Roth radiates an unnerving quality who seems to be possessed by the question: what is peace? Is it the sustained feeling of happiness, or can peace just be what’s left when you’ve outrun the darkness?

Related: Sundance: Rebecca Hall Unravels in Psychological Thriller, ‘Resurrection’

If you’re intrigued, and in search of a smartly-written film that starts as a slow-burn drama before ending up as a head-spinning, jaw-dropping hallucinatory fever dream of a film, then look no further than Sundown . Led by an incredible performance by Tim Roth, Sundown  is one of the most unexpected, gripping, and utterly arresting dramas I’ve had the joy of seeing recently.

1h 22m. ‘Sundown’ is rated R for sexual content, violence, language, and some graphic nudity.

Ryan is the editorial manager of Cinemacy, which he co-runs with his older sister, Morgan. Ryan is a member of the Hollywood Critics Association. Ryan's favorite films include 2001: A Space Odyssey , The Social Network , and The Master .

Review , Ultra Indie

‘The Cavalry’ Review: Spotlighting Israeli Police Horses Through Video Art

‘Skincare’ Review: Beauty is a Cutthroat Business

‘cuckoo’ review: a shriek-filled, ear-splitting, bird horror.

‘Last Man Standing’ Review: The Last “Real” Jewish Gangster

Leave a reply cancel reply, privacy preference center, privacy preferences.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘Sundown’ Review: Michel Franco’s Chiller ‘New Order’ Followup Is a Deadpan Existential Mystery

Nicholas barber.

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. Bleecker Street releases the film in theaters on Friday, January 28.

The characters in Michel Franco ’s “ Sundown ” are on a luxurious Mexican holiday in which they swim in the clear sea and their private infinity pool, take a regal interest in the local singers and cliff divers, and lie flat out on sun loungers on their hotel suite’s terrace while a waiter brings them their morning margaritas. It’s relaxing for them, but absolutely nerve-frazzling for anyone who saw Franco’s last film, “New Order,” a traumatizingly gory drama in which a high-society wedding turned into a bloodbath, and things got more stressful from there.

Sure enough, it doesn’t take long for trouble to come to this particular paradise, but “Sundown” is quieter and more oblique than “New Order.” It’s smaller, too, in terms of its cast and its scope. That film’s merciless depiction of a city imploding in revolution and counter-revolution thrilled some viewers and offended others, most vocally in Franco’s native Mexico. His enigmatic follow-up is more likely to prompt puzzled conversations about what he’s getting at.

Tim Roth stars as Neil, an unshaven, middle-aged Londoner who appears to be in this tropical resort with his wife and children. Mini-spoiler alert: they’re actually his sister, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and his grown-up niece (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and nephew (Samuel Bottomley). When someone rings them to say that Neil’s mother is at death’s door, the family rushes to the airport, but when they get there, Neil says that he doesn’t have his passport. He sends his sobbing, raging loved ones back to Britain without him, and promises to be on the next flight.

In fact, his passport is in his bag. He seemed to get on well with his relatives, but instead of following them, he takes a taxi to a cheap hotel by the beach in Acapulco, and proceeds to loaf around. When he is feeling energetic, he pads to the sea for a paddle in his flip-flops, shorts, and T-shirt. When he isn’t, he slumps on a plastic chair on the sand, knocking back bottles of cold beer as the waves lap over his feet. If “Sundown” were ever to spawn a drinking game in which viewers tried to match Neil beverage for beverage, it might be fatal.

Between this and Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island, there is evidence to suggest that Roth currently picks roles that require him to kick back in scenic locations for a week or two, and who can blame him? But Neil’s motives are harder to fathom. He is happy to exchange pleasantries with a pretty local shopkeeper, Berenice (Iazua Larios), and whenever his grieving sister calls him, he assures her that he is busy trying to obtain a new passport from the British consulate. Otherwise, he says almost nothing. He doesn’t explain himself, and he doesn’t show signs of having any plans that stretch further than the next cerveza. Nor does he seem to be either elated or pained by the deceit. Roth’s expressions range from slightly dazed to slightly drunk, and so, as the days drift by, “Sundown” becomes a liberating blend of mystery and existential deadpan comedy. Some viewers will be exasperated by Neil’s blank, Bartleby-like refusal to justify his behavior; some of the characters certainly are. But it is funny to see someone so content to do nothing, and a film so willing to indulge him. And there is tension, too, especially for “New Order” survivors. Why has Neil abandoned his responsibilities? Is he having a breakdown? And how long can Franco keep us in this limbo?

The mystery is solved by the end of the film, but it would be wrong to give any more clues to its solution here. One of the pleasures of “Sundown” is that it is impossible to guess where it is heading — and it heads in some bizarre directions. But it is fair enough to say that, as in “New Order,” there is violence and social unrest, and there are dealings with the authorities. The twist is that Neil’s detached mood rarely changes, and nor does the film’s. A shooting is given no more emphasis than a game of dominos; imprisonment seems no different from sitting on the beach.

The viewer is kept at a distance from the characters, but that distance is more intriguing than alienating: rather than being in the thick of events, we’re catching tantalizing glimpses of them. Franco has developed a minimalist style which makes his films seem like brief summaries of themselves. He constructs them from short scenes with small scraps of dialogue, with hardly any music or flashy cinematography, so although the pace can feel lackadaisical, he can get through three Hollywood dramas’ worth of events in one low-budget indie drama’s running time. In “Sundown”, the end credits start rolling after 75 minutes, but an astounding amount has happened.

But what does any of it mean? Possibly Franco’s constantly surprising and slightly frustrating film is concerned with the question of whether you can escape your past. Possibly it is concerned with mental health. Undoubtedly it’s concerned with the divide between the rich and poor. One of the few things that Neil says with any conviction is that he doesn’t care about money, but that’s something that only people who have money tend to say.

“Sundown” premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

Most Popular

You may also like.

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Prepare Your Kids for School After a Summer of Screen Time

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
• Kids Say 0 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Strong drama about judgment and perception; sex, drinking.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Sundown is a drama about a man (Tim Roth) who walks away from his family after a tragedy and starts a life of leisure on the beach in Mexico. It's a quiet, keenly-observed movie that's possibly meant to challenge viewers' perceptions and judgments. It includes two brief, violent…

Why Age 16+?

Full-frontal male nudity in prison shower. Graphic sex scenes, with thrusting, e

A few uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "motherf----r," "a--hole."

Two brief, strong scenes of violence. Shooting on freeway includes windows being

Characters drink liberally throughout: cocktails, beers, etc. Character adds ext

Any Positive Content?

No clear message, but one possible interpretation is that the movie challenges v

No clear role models here: Characters behave in ways that serve only themselves,

Takes place mostly in Mexico, but movie is mainly about a wealthy, privileged Wh

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Full-frontal male nudity in prison shower. Graphic sex scenes, with thrusting, etc. Topless female in more than one scene. Viewers are meant to think that the main character is being unfaithful, but he's not.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Two brief, strong scenes of violence. Shooting on freeway includes windows being shot out and dead bodies. Sudden, violent shooting on beach; gun, dead body shown. Blood in water. Character hit in the head with empty beer bottle. Character collapses, falls down stairs. A death in the family, funeral, etc., discussed. Caught fish still alive, gulping for oxygen. Dead pig in bloody puddle.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink liberally throughout: cocktails, beers, etc. Character adds extra booze to his drink. Drunkenness or hangovers are rarely depicted. Character takes prescription pill.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

No clear message, but one possible interpretation is that the movie challenges viewers to check and recheck their own judgments and expectations.

Positive Role Models

No clear role models here: Characters behave in ways that serve only themselves, and they do so as a necessity of the story. That said, while it might be easy to be appalled by Neil's behavior, by the end, viewers might find sympathy for him. Money is also a key factor in the movie: For some characters, money is very important; for others, not so much.

Diverse Representations

Takes place mostly in Mexico, but movie is mainly about a wealthy, privileged White man and his family. Latino characters who are included vary in depiction from criminal to kind. Berenice, who becomes Neil's lover for a time, remains somewhat mysterious and isn't fully fleshed out.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Sundown is a drama about a man ( Tim Roth ) who walks away from his family after a tragedy and starts a life of leisure on the beach in Mexico. It's a quiet, keenly-observed movie that's possibly meant to challenge viewers' perceptions and judgments. It includes two brief, violent shooting sequences, with guns, blood, and dead bodies shown. A man is hit in the head with a beer bottle, and someone collapses and falls down stairs. Death is discussed. There are graphic sex scenes, a topless woman is shown, and several fully naked men are seen in a prison shower. Language includes a few bursts of "f--k," "f---ing," and "motherf----r" and one "a--hole." Characters drink liberally throughout -- cocktails at first and then many, many beers -- but drunkenness and hangovers are rarely depicted. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

Sundown - A Slow Burn

What's the story.

In SUNDOWN, a wealthy family of four is on vacation in Mexico, relaxing in a luxurious hotel. Then Alice Bennett ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ) receives a call and learns that her mother is gravely ill. She decides to cut the vacation short, and orders her grown kids, Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley), to start packing. At the airport, Neil ( Tim Roth ) rummages for his passport and mumbles that he forgot it. In the ensuing confusion, he slips away, catches a cab, and asks to be taken to a hotel ... any hotel. On the phone, he lies to Alice about how he's trying to get his passport situation squared away, but instead starts lazing on the beach, drinking beer, and hanging out with local shopgirl Berenice (Iazua Larios). What's going on with Neil?

Is It Any Good?

This quietly sharp, deeply observant movie is about human nature, both the characters' and the audience's. It plays with our judgment and preconceived notions with a confident, even-handed touch. Written and directed by Michel Franco, Sundown begins almost lazily, with scenes that seem unimportant. The family members sleep in the sun, swim, float in the pool, drink cocktails, etc. They eat dinner and argue about a game and try not to look at their phones. The trick here is that Franco wants us to assume what their actual relationship is, and it's likely that most will guess wrong. It's on us to keep checking and rechecking our assumptions and how they relate to what's actually happening.

The movie's opening scenes are merely a test for what comes later. Can we retain sympathy for Neil after he's run out on his family, avoided a funeral, and shirked his duties (even after Alice specifically asked him for help)? Can we retain sympathy for him as he begins to live a life of ease and pleasure? It helps to employ Ted Lasso's "Be curious, not judgmental." Perhaps Neil is dealing with some kind of fear surrounding death or funerals? Something else? Either way, Sundown keeps viewers on their toes, with a rhythm that both relaxes and shocks. It pulses and breathes. And Roth, who's in nearly every shot, gives a bold, measured performance that's one of his best.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Sundown 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How is sex depicted here? What was your initial reaction to Neil and Berenice sleeping together, compared to what's actually happening?

How is drinking depicted? Is it glamorized, shown as an essential part of a life of leisure? Are there consequences for drinking? Why is that important?

Money doesn't seem to be very important to Neil, who gives up most of his inheritance. Do you feel the same way? Why, or why not?

How did you feel about Neil over the course of the movie? Did you ever decide that you didn't like him? Did you change your mind? Why?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 4, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : February 17, 2022
• Cast : Tim Roth , Charlotte Gainsbourg , Iazua Larios
• Director : Michel Franco
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Bleecker Street Media
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 83 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity
• Last updated : October 8, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

The Lost Daughter

Five Easy Pieces

Indie films, drama movies that tug at the heartstrings.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

More From Decider

New Shows & Movies To Watch This Weekend: Prime Video's 'Jackpot!' +...

Peacock Has Removed Raygun and the Entire Olympics Breaking Competition...

'WWHL': Bowen Yang Says One Terrible 'SNL' Host Once Made "Multiple Cast...

Peacock's Gary Coleman Doc Questions The Late Child Actor's "Suspicious"...

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: August 2024's Freshest Films to Watch

'Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles' Star Josh Flagg Gives Update On His...

Kora's Scars in the 'Rebel Moon: Director's Cut' Sex Scenes Were Sofia...

11 Best New Shows on Netflix: August 2024's Top Upcoming Series to Watch

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to copy URL

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sundown’ on Hulu, a Minimalist Drama in Which Tim Roth Does a Lot of Nothing, Fascinatingly

Where to stream:.

• Sundown (2022)

How Cheryl Strayed's Life Inspired Kathryn Hahn’s 'Tiny Beautiful Things' Hot Tub Scene with Tim Roth

Who's who in marvel's 'she-hulk' support group, from el aguila to man bull, why was wong fighting abomination in 'shang-chi' 'she-hulk' episode 3 finally ties up that loose end, stream it or skip it: 'she-hulk: attorney at law' on disney+, where tatiana maslany is big and green and defends the superpowered.

Now on Hulu, Sundown reunites director Michel Franco with stars Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg, all of whom previously collaborated on 2015’s Chronic , a similar arthouse melodrama. The new film focuses more intently on Roth, who’s enjoying a bit of an indie-film renaissance with this and the underrated Bergman Island . For Franco, it’s a more palatable follow-up to his controversial and divisive dystopian thriller New Order – but it’s also similarly unflinching in its point-of-view.

SUNDOWN : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Neil (Roth) sits in the sun, drinking a beer. He doesn’t say much. It’s a lazy vacation with his sister Alice (Gainsbourg) and her children, Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley). They’re Londoners in Acapulco, enjoying a plush resort – drinks by the pool, primo cuts of steak for dinner, loads of sunshine. Their languorousness is disrupted by a phone call. Alice answers. It’s her and Neil’s mother. She’s on her way to the hospital. They swiftly pack up and they’re on the shuttle to the airport when another call comes. Alice answers and soon she can’t compose herself. She shoves the phone to Neil, who calmly and unemotionally responds to the news of his mother’s death.

They arrive at the airport just in time to board the first flight out, but Neil can’t find his passport. He says he must’ve left it at the resort. They should go on ahead without him and he’ll get the next flight, he says. He gets in a cab and asks the driver to take him to a hotel, any hotel. They arrive at a grungy place and he’s shown to his room and opens his bag and there’s his passport in the pocket. He walks down to a beachside bar-restaurant and orders a beer. The server brings a bucket of several beers and Neil sits and drinks, speaking minimally and only when necessary. The waves wash up under his feet and there he sits, drinking, inexpressive.

On his walk back to the hotel, he buys a beer from Bernice (Iazua Larios), who runs a bodega. He takes calls and texts from Alice, who’s asking him about cremation and services, and grilling him on the state of his passport. He says it’s lost and he has to go to the consulate. On another night he buys another beer from Bernice, and they hang out together. It becomes a frequent occurrence, Bernice keeping Neil company. He seems like poor company, considering his tight-lipped demeanor, but she appreciates something about him. They have sex and his phone keeps chiming with Alice’s attempts to contact him. After a while he drops his phone in a drawer. He seems weary of it constantly interrupting all the nothing he’s intent on doing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sundown ideally pairs with Chronic , as long as you don’t mind a double-feature of heavy-duty subject matter.

Performance Worth Watching: Roth is mesmerizing here. This and Bergman Island have thrust him back towards relevance. (The last things most of us saw him in were Twin Peaks: The Return and The Hateful Eight .)

Memorable Dialogue: “What’s wrong with you?” Alice asks. “Nothing,” Neil lies.

Sex and Skin: Male frontal (not Roth); female toplessness; stylized sex scenes, mostly in the dark.

Our Take: Franco and Roth conspire to keep their cards close to their chests in this existential drama. The title Sundown hints at something, but I won’t say what. Neil is switched off, numb. When a man on a jet ski dashes onto the beach and shoots and kills someone nearby as Neil sits with a beer, staring into the middle distance, he barely unfurrows his brow. The film’s small dramatic reveals swell to larger things, things that continue to barely faze the guy. If anything’s happening inside his skull, they manifest only microscopically on the surface.

Elements of who Neil is manifest gradually. It’s tempting to say Franco is stingy, but those elements are Roth’s handholds on a methodical climb to… something. That climb brushes against things that might be guilt or shame, a commentary on economic disparity perhaps, as we learn for sure things that we assume to be true, e.g., that resort they were staying at surely isn’t cheap. It’s oddly fascinating, watching Roth plodding along, doing nothing, neglecting the obvious stuff that needs his attention, forcing us to fill in the blanks of his attempt to break from his reality. Why in the hell is he doing this?

Franco captures the story with a chilly detachment that keeps us at a distance but compelled to observe, knowing just enough to remain involved. Should we judge him for his callousness and deception? The film leads to a climax that seems banal, but after 70-odd minutes of plausible, realistic microdrama – laced with two, maybe three, mildly surreal hallucinations – what did we expect? His brain didn’t get zapped by aliens. His damage is all too real.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Sundown is an absorbing, minimalist drama with a strong performance by Roth.

Will you stream or skip the minimalist drama #Sundown on VOD? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) February 21, 2022

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com .

• Stream It Or Skip It

Andy Cohen Implies That He Never Wants To See Or Hear From Bethenny Frankel Again On 'WWHL'

Is 'The View' Going Off The Air?

Where's Kelly Ripa This Week? 'Live' Co-Host's Absence Stretches Into Week Two

Peacock Has Removed Raygun and the Entire Olympics Breaking Competition Off The Platform

'The View's Whoopi Goldberg Snaps At Joy Behar While Defending Harrison Butker's Controversial Commencement Speech: "Stop That!"

'Twisters' Comes to Digital, But When Will 'Twisters' Be Streaming on Peacock?

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 81% Alien: Romulus Link to Alien: Romulus
• 100% Daughters Link to Daughters
• 78% Cuckoo Link to Cuckoo

New TV Tonight

• 100% Pachinko: Season 2
• -- OceanXplorers: Season 1
• 89% Chimp Crazy: Season 1
• -- Classified: Season 1
• -- Reasonable Doubt: Season 2
• -- The Anonymous: Season 1
• -- Face to Face With Scott Peterson: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 91% Bad Monkey: Season 1
• 53% The Umbrella Academy: Season 4
• 96% Industry: Season 3
• 77% Lady in the Lake: Season 1
• -- Troppo: Season 2
• 58% Emily in Paris: Season 4
• 100% Supacell: Season 1
• 78% Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• 82% A Good Girl's Guide to Murder: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• 91% Bad Monkey: Season 1 Link to Bad Monkey: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Box Office 2024: Top 10 Movies of the Year

All James Cameron Movies Ranked

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

James Wan’s Teacup : Premiere Date, Trailer, Cast & More

2024 Emmy Awards Ballot: Complete with Tomatometer and Audience Scores

• Trending on RT
• Best Movies of 2024
• Renewed and Cancelled TV
• Popular TV Shows
• Re-Release Calendar

Where to Watch

Rent Sundown on Prime Video, or buy it on Prime Video.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Henry Hathaway

Gene Tierney

Graham "Zia" Fletcher

Bruce Cabot

William Crawford

George Sanders

Major A.L. Coombes

Cedric Hardwicke

Bishop Coombes

Harry Carey

Sundown Ending Explained: What has happened to Neil?

Sundown plot synopsis.

If you have seen Sundown , Michel Franco’s existentialist drama which was released in 2021, you may have been left with a few questions. It’s a puzzling movie and one that isn’t necessarily easy to understand.

Tim Roth stars as Neil Bennet, a middle-aged man who, as the movie begins, is seen staring into the ocean. It is clear from this opening scene that Neil is not a happy chappie but the reasons behind his discontent are hazy at best.

Where is Neil at the start of the movie?

Neil is vacationing with his sister Alice and her two children, Colin and Alexa, in Acapulco. With the exception of Neil, everybody seems to be having a good time. But then tragedy strikes back home and after receiving this upsetting news, Alice tells everyone to pack their bags so they can catch the first plane back to London.

When they get to the airport, Neil discovers that he has lost his passport. He tells his family to go on without him and promises to follow on the next flight after he has found the missing document.

Does Neil find his passport?

No, and for one very good reason: it wasn’t missing in the first place. So, what is going on?

At the early stage of the movie, we can’t be entirely sure. For some reason, Neil has decided to stay behind in Acapulco. After leaving his family at the airport, he books himself into another hotel, becomes friendly with Jorge, a local taxi driver, and begins a romantic relationship with a woman named Berenice.

When Alice calls him to find out when he will be returning home, he tells her that it won’t be too long. However, this is likely a lie as it would appear that Neil has no intention of leaving the Mexican beach resort.

Why does Neil stay in Acapulco?

It could be assumed that Neil has a good life due to the meat processing business that has made the Bennet family very wealthy. But as we all know, money isn’t the root of all happiness.

During the early part of the movie, it would appear that Neil stays in Acapulco to find some kind of fulfilment in his empty life. He might be rich but this clearly hasn’t made him happy. This could be the reason why he has decided to stick around but an event at the end of the movie opens up another possibility.

Later, Alice returns to Acapulco to look for Neil and when she finds him, she confronts her brother about his decision to abandon the family during their difficult time. Neil isn’t able to give a convincing reason why he decided to stay behind, which is as frustrating for Alice as it is for the viewer.

Does Alice convince Neil to come home?

Neil decides not to go home. After discussing the family business with Alice, he decides to hand over his assets and inheritance to her and signs a document in the presence of his lawyer to finalize this.

On her way back to the airport, Alice’s car is attacked and she is shot and killed. One of the shooters is Jorge, the taxi driver that Neil befriended, and when the police investigate, they assume Neil may have hired these criminals to kill his sister.

Neil is arrested and imprisoned for his suspected involvement but is later released.

Did Neil plot his sister’s death?

We can’t really say for sure but as Neil is already very wealthy, it is unclear why he would. There would be little need to kill her for financial reasons and as he seemingly had no other motivation to want her dead, it is doubtful that he would pay to have her killed.

It is likely that Jorge and his men opened fire on the car so they could kidnap Alice for ransom. Jorge presumably heard Neil talking on the phone about his family fortune and this likely gave him the reason to go after her. If this is the case, Alice’s death was probably accidental.

Ultimately, it is left to the viewer to decide as, like the scene at the end of the movie, the reason behind Alice’s death is left open to interpretation.

What happens to Neil?

After the police release Neil, he continues to spend more time with Berenice. He also meets with Colin and Alexa and gives them the rights to the family business.

A few days later, he has a vision of a dead pig and then falls down the stairs of his apartment.

Berenice takes him to the hospital where she discovers he has brain cancer.

Neil then leaves Berenice at the hospital and starts to walk the streets of Mexico alone.

The movie ends with an empty chair near the beach and Neil’s abandoned clothes scattered around it. This obviously leaves us with one question…

Where is Neil?

We don’t know. However, it is likely that Neil has killed himself after abandoning his clothes and walking into the sea. His brain cancer was probably the reason for this as it may be that he saw little future for himself. This might also be the reason why he decided to live out his last few days in Acapulco, not only to enjoy his final few moments on earth but to shield Alice and the rest of his family from his impending death.

The title of the movie also clues us into this. Just as the sun goes down as night falls, so too does our life when the darkness of death beckons.

Neil is distant throughout much of the movie and the reason for this is probably the crushing inevitability that his life, like the sun, is about to fade.

This is our interpretation of the ending but if you have answers of your own, please share your thoughts by leaving us a comment below!

Read More: Sundown Movie Review

Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!

24 thoughts on “sundown ending explained: what has happened to neil”.

Hey Brad, thanks for getting in touch and your encouraging comments about our website.

Sundown is definately one of the strangest movies I have seen in a while. It opens up a lot of questions, which is frustrating. I appreciate your suggestion about greed though – that might have a connection to the pig visions, as you said.

Thanks again for commenting and checking out the site. I hope more of our articles will be of interest to you in the future.

Yes, Sundown was a very weird movie. I too was under the impression that Alice was his wife and they were his kids. When the mother died I assumed it was her mother that died as he has no emotion, but thats his character for the whole damn movie lol When he pretends to lose his passport it seems he just wants to escape his life / the family business. Alice’s death was weird. I didn’t think that he had anything to do with Alice’s death, but the fact that it involved people he hung out was suspicious. The pig visions were weird. At first I was thinking ‘why is there a pig in the jail showers, that’s strange’, but I think it not only represents the family business, but also greed, that he feels life has become all about money. In closing I will say that I don’t like movies like this that have so many unanswered questions, however it intrigued me enough to seek the answers from this website, so in a way it has interested me enough to do my own research. All in all this movie was as dull and the main character. Like a dementia patient… it’s not memorable and I want my 1 hour 19 minutes back, but thanks everyone for clarifying some answers for me. Rèading this site was more interesting than watching the movie!

I think the whole point of the movie was Neil was allergic to bacon and that’s how his family got their fortune.

Thanks for your thoughts Lori. Yes, it is a weird movie. A good one though, despite its abstract nature.Thanks for getting in touch.

I gotta say that was one weird movie. But my guess is that was his sister and niece and nephew and not his kids.He knew along he had cancer and wanted to keep it from his family not to upset them.He wanted to live his last days out enjoying himself with out a pity party from his family. He truly wanted his sister and her children to have the inheritance because he really did love them and knew he wouldn’t need it.Im not quite sure of the end though wether he truly committed suicide or is just going to live out the rest of his days alone.

If he knew he was dying why ask for more money ? No one to leave it to? Dont you think when he went into a state even the girlfriend , pigs etc were his brain and dementia ? Just a few thoughts

It is obvious that Neil had everything planed from the mothers death all the way to his sisters death. Hence him and Alice were the sole benefices of the family fourtune, he gives everything to Alice and then have her killed. Remeber she asks him about seeing the kids at the signing he says yes.. So he knew once Alice was out the picture the kids would have to come there to sign documents, and that’s when he knew he would see them. Also through out the movie on several occasions you see him, the taxi driver, and gun men together. Everything was set up at the first meet and greet, he then left the money for the hit in his room hence his luggage getting stolen. As for his relationship with Bernierce they were alreay a couple, he met her long before the vacation. You have to remember he is a billionaire so being decrete is of importance so he kept her a secret, but after he separated from his family, losing his passport he went to her, making it seem like they had just met. But as time went on they were very open not caring who saw them, they were already in love. That’s why when she found out about his cancer she was devasted. Because she had not had much time with him. It’s sad money is the root to all evil. Lastly if you paid attion to the detail at the signings he only received monthly pay outs of 10,000, but at the signing with the kids he asked for 100,000 up front. He knew they wouldn’t be thinking straight. This all tthe way around is just messed up! So sad‼️

Thanks for your thoughts Dave. The film is quite baffling, perhaps needlessly so at times. I still thought the film was okay but it could have been clearer.

The movie is so vague, including the relationship between Alice and Neil, since at first, it appeared to look like they were a couple, and that both Alexa and Colin are also Neil’s children as well. The reason being is because if Neil is capable to “lie” about his own passport, then he is also capable to lie about his relationship with Alice. Where was Neil’s introduction about Berenice to Alice? Neil had every opportunity to explain to Alice through the phone he met a nice lady- and he did not, he just ignores her calls completely as if she never existed. If Neil and Alice were brother sister then how come Berenice was not introduced to anyone? And why the stoic reaction as soon as he found out about Jorge’s involvement to Alice’s demise? Maybe he was involve in Alice’s death so that he can receive a bigger pension, as he was present when a murder happened at the beach. And what is more baffling is the fact that my first impression was that it was Alice’s mother who had died, since it is only natural Neil would care less if it’s the in-laws or the wife’s side of the family who had passed. That is part of the reason why she came back to see him. The fact that she mention kids upon her argument with him, ‘Don’t you want to see your kids?”, or something along the lines of that! Anyways, I can’t really recommend a movie that asks more questions than it answers?

I strong believe that Neil just want to avoid confrontation with death and his mother’s death was the turning point. He just decided to take control of his life in his way. Nobody in his family knew about his sickness and he wants to keep that way. The end clarifies his intentions; he doesn’t want anybody that he loves to share his grief, so he decides to abandon Berenices and find a secluded place to live the rest of his days.

When I heard his lawyer mention his “condition” I thought he was talking about autism, which would explain why he had no emotional connection to any drama that was going on around him, then when it was discovered that his cancer had spread to his brain, then I felt that the cancer was a reason for a complete personality change. Altogether a very thought-provking movie. It reminded me of L’etranger by Albert Camus, about a man who went to prison because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral.

The point you all missed is that he’s obviously banging his sister and those are his kids. The guilt is what the movie is about his cancer is of no importance because he feels he deserves it. The kids know all the seedy details

Hey, thanks for your comment. That’s really helpful to know – I hadn’t come across the term ‘sundowning’ before. It does change my perception of the story. Thanks so much!

First, I think there are some insightful theories in this post what was going on with Neil. I think Neil did have some (maybe subconscious) guilt about the family business, and what the fate was for these animals. In fact, the movie starts out with him looking at the fish on the boat gasping for air. The whole ‘pig’ thing confused me until I read the previous comments. I thought there really was a pig in the mens shower, lol…

It is possible that you are missing something. Which makes the movie a completely different watch.

“Sundowning”. This is the term where people with dementia get confused when the sun sets and into the night. They can lose speech, go wandering.

He knew he had tumours. The visions he had were part of that. It’s not clear whether the rest of the family knew or not. Sometimes I think they did. Other times not, and just knew he wasn’t happy.

But often the times he’s just standing there, he’s sundowning. He meets Berenice in effect that state. Other times he’s just zoned out. It’s the slow horror and visions we are not yet seeing. The time of the day of the scenes come with this.

I realised this after the movie had finished, when the titles were rolling. Perhaps I will rewatch it soon.

I think the cancer spread to his brain and it made Neil unable to feel normal human emotion.

These commentators may have missed some things, Neil wasn’t married, he knew about his cancer all along as noted by the Dr in Mexico, the pigs play a huge part as the family fortune is from slaughtering them—hence guilt. So the empty chair is a suicide walk into the ocean. Not a huge mystery.

It’s all about swimming with the pigs, a new and extravagant Mexican excursion. Also, the lawyer knew about Neil’s brain cancer because he mentioned early in the movie about Neil’s ‘condition’.

thanks for your thoughts 🙂

I don’t think he knew he was dying from the beginning, although that is an interesting thought and might want to make you want to live the rest of your life without worries on a beach. I think he was simply unhappy with his life and marriage, and didn’t care about money. But life has a funny and cruel way of surprising you when things seem to be going “well”- so surprise you have brain cancer now! Too bad your end has come.

Thanks for your thoughts. The pigs were an unusual inclusion but more clarity as to their meaning would have been helpful. I guess we are supposed to make up our own mind.

When his sister returns to Mexico, I think, why doesn’t she ask if he is depressed? I think the whole movie would have been fine without the pigs or knowing what the business actually was. That knowledge and the dead pigs adds another layer, but that layer isn’t leaned into enough to warrant it being there.

Je pense qu’il s’est senti étouffé. Mais je ne sais pas si cela est lié à ses actions dans le film. Point intéressant cependant.

Il y a une image au début du film, sur des poissons en train de s’asphixlifier.. peut-être s’est-il toujours senti comme cela. Pas seulement à ce moment de sa vie. J’ai eu envie de le voir très noir. Et se penser qu il aurait pu être l organisateur. Pour une fois. C est toujours la soeur qui decide. C zst quand même étrange cette série de morts. Je vais trop loin?

Leave a comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘sundown’: film review.

Devon Werkheiser and Sean Marquette play horndog teenagers on a hormone-fueled trip south of the border.

By Justin Lowe

Justin Lowe

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

With rapidly fading hopes of grabbing the attention of teens gearing up for summer vacation, Mexican-produced R-rated comedy Sundown from Lionsgate-Televisa’s Pantelion Films inexplicably turns up weeks after the peak of Spring Break season. Even worse than the mishandled timing, the film’s uninvolving premise, recycled plot and stock characters assure its swift disappearance from theaters prior to locking in a late-night slot on some undiscriminating premium cable network.

Also known by its cheeky Mexican title Guatdefoc , Fernando Lebrija’s second feature attempts to create a believable bromance between high-school seniors and electronic dance music fans Logan (Devon Werkheiser ) and Blake (Sean Marquette), best buds whose constant one-upsmanship results in any number of ill-considered schemes. While his parents are out of town on vacation, Logan decides to bail on his housesitting responsibilities and head down to Puerto Vallarta for Spring Break after Blake persuades him to pursue his mega-crush Lina (Sara Paxton) south of the border. Logan’s secret weapons to persuade her to finally give him some face time are his father’s Rolex Submariner, which he “borrows” for the trip, and a custom dance track that he’s created on his home mixing deck and saved on a USB drive.

Related Stories

Alain delon, seductive star of european cinema, dies at 88, 'friends' creators recall defending monica's storyline in pilot after nbc executive's opposition.

Release date: May 13, 2016

Once they arrive, however, they’re denied a hotel room after Blake’s booking turns out to be a bogus ripoff , but with the help of overly friendly, English-speaking cab driver Chuy ( Silverio Palacios ), they’re soon installed in a storage area in the hotel basement. On the streets and beaches of Puerto Vallarta the party is raging, with an endless supply of booze and bikini-clad babes to distract the pair. It’s all great material for Blake, who’s shooting footage of wet T-shirt contests and topless women on his phone for his raunchy website. At night the clubs are filled with pulsating EDM beats provided by the likes of world-class DJs Paul Oakenfold , Adrian Lux and Steve Aoki , making for an almost perfect setting for Logan, if only he could find Lina . Once she does turn up, she’s barely sober enough to stand, foiling his plan to charm her out of her tight red dress.

On the rebound, he meets local girl Gaby (Camilla Belle), another EDM fan who soon has him following her to a nearby hotel room, but he passes out before the action can even begin. When he recovers in the morning, she demands $300 he doesn’t have as compensation for their uneventful overnight and after he refuses, Logan realizes that she’s disappeared with his dad’s Rolex. Blake and Logan enlist Chuy to help them track her down at a nearby strip club, but by that point she’s turned the timepiece over to her pimp, no-nonsense gangster Dorian ( Jordi Molla ), who offers to sell it back to them for $5,000. Broke and dispirited, the duo will have to decide whether to return home defeated or challenge the petty criminal at his own game.

Playing like some lightweight version of The Hangover for the underage set, about all that Sundown has going for it is recognizable plot formulas combining R-rated humor and gooey melodrama, as Blake hits on practically any female within leering distance while Logan and Gaby bond over their common interests and burgeoning attraction. Lacking any characters that don’t fit easy stereotypes, the film reveals Chuy as an endlessly resourceful fixer and establishes that Gaby is only turning tricks because she’s in debt to Dorian, but really wants to quit the nightlife so that she can attend university.

Visually, the film represents a transparent ploy to promote tourism for the state of Jalisco (which provided production support), particularly among those looking for a package-tourist Ibiza knockoff . Other than some rather surprising DJ appearances, attractive scenery and beautiful bodies, Lebrija can’t find much to command attention other than an indulgently long and off-putting cock-fighting sequence that has Logan trying to raise a stake to get his watch out of hock and win the heart of his clearly compromised heroine.

Production company: Irreversible Pictures

Distributor: Pantelion

Cast: Devon Werkheiser , Sean Marquette, Camilla Belle, Silverio Palacios , Jordi Molla , Sara Paxton, Teri Hatcher, John Michael Higgins

Director:  Fernando Lebrija

Screenwriters: Miguel Tejada-Flores , Fernando Lebrija

Producers:  Fernando Lebrija , Willie Kutner , Andy Boggeri , Pablo Lebrija , Regina Lebrija , Leonardo Zimbron , Sandro Halphen

Executive producers: Diego Romo , Fernando Perez Gavilan , Ricardo Gomez, Harris Tulchin

Directors of photography: Gerardo Madrazo , Pietro Zuercher       

Production designer: Patricio M. Farrell

Costume designer: Lupita Peckinpah

Editors: Craig Herring, Radu Ion

Music: Edward Rogers

Casting directors: Anne McCarthy, Kellie Roy

Rated R, 103 minutes

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Alex garland talks “stupid” ‘civil war’ takes and ’28 days later’ trilogy, reveals favorite film he’s done, john aprea, actor in ‘the godfather part ii’ and ‘full house,’ dies at 83, ‘alien: romulus’ wins busy box office weekend with $41.5m opening, $108m globally, halle berry has one response to ‘catwoman’ critics who say 2004 movie “sucked balls”, jamie lee curtis is “grateful” for lindsay lohan as ‘freakier friday’ filming nears end: “my ultimate movie daughter”.

Screen Rant

John cena's new comedy movie continues his dismal 2024 rotten tomatoes streak.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Jackpot Soundtrack Guide: Every Song & When They Play

Jackpot cast & character guide, jackpot ending explained.

• John Cena's new comedy movie Jackpot! continues his 2024 Rotten Tomatoes streak with a 38% critics score.
• Critics critique the comedy in Jackpot! , calling it predictable and lacking comedic energy despite Awkwafina and Cena's chemistry.
• Despite Cena's recent critical failures, Jackpot! has an interesting concept, showing his career could still make a comeback.

John Cena's new comedy movie Jackpot! continues his dismal 2024 Rotten Tomatoes streak, with the new Prime Video movie getting a plethora of negative reviews. Taking place in the year 2030, the cast of Jackpot! is led by Awkwafina as Katie, an actress down on her luck until she wins the lottery. However, new laws allow losing players to try and kill her for the rest of the day and claim her winnings. She teams up with Cena's Noel, a new lottery protection agent, who will get some of her winnings if he can keep her alive all day.

Now, Rotten Tomatoes has revealed the negative critics score for Jackpot! , revealing the comedy to have a 38% critics score based on 26 reviews. This continues a dismal streak for Cena with movies he's starred in during 2024, with both spy thriller Argylle and another Prime Video comedy, Ricky Stanicky , both earning rotten reviews from critics.

Why Jackpot! Is Getting Such Negative Reviews From Critics

The movie's comedy is its biggest critique.

Many negative reviews for Jackpot! aim their criticisms at the comedy, with many reviewers finding it to be predictable and boring as the film goes on. While Awkwafina and Cena's chemistry is praised even in some of the more negative critiques, the movie built around them isn't up to par with the comedic energy the pair have in a few funny scenes. The runtime is also criticized in a few cases, with the 105-minute movie being criticized for not having enough substance to justify its length.

Although the movie's score on the website means it won't be considered one of Cena's best movies , the fact it has some substance is a sign his film career is simply in a lull period. The actor showcased his abilities earlier this year when he joined the cast of The Bear season 3 , guest starring as Sammy Fak. Even though his movies haven't received positive scores in quite some time, it doesn't seem to be his acting abilities at fault. This streak of rotten scores could just be bad luck.

Cena's latest fresh movie on Rotten Tomatoes was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem , which scored a 95% with critics.

Although the movie continues Cena's streak of critically panned movies, Jackpot! still has an interesting concept that could have seemingly been presented in a more engaging way. However, with the movie only just dropping on Prime Video today, August 15, 2024, it will be some time until the audience score for the film is clearer. Perhaps, despite his rotten streak, the movie will be able to redeem itself for some viewers, lessening the blow of this latest rotten report.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Jackpot! (2024)

In a near-future California, the state introduces a high-stakes "Grand Lottery" with a deadly twist: to claim the prize, the winner must survive until sundown without being killed by other participants. The action-comedy follows Katie, a recent Los Angeles transplant played by Awkwafina, who finds herself with a winning ticket.

The 9 best things to watch this weekend, from the 'Mad Max: Fury Road' prequel to every 'Alien' movie

• Shows like "Emily in Paris" and "Bel-Air" returned for new seasons this week.
• Two theatrical releases from this year are now streaming.
• True crime fans can watch a new Laci Peterson docuseries on Netflix.

There's a wide variety of movies and shows available to stream this weekend.

On the TV front, series like "Emily in Paris" and "Bel-Air" are both back and premiering new episodes. If you're looking for non-fiction, "American Murder: Laci Peterson" and "Chimp Crazy" are out now.

There are two picks worth highlighting for action movies: "Furiosa," which has come to Max after premiering in theaters, and the streaming-only movie "Jackpot!" starring John Cena and Awkwafina.

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

If you want action-adventure, "Furiosa" is now streaming.

The "Mad Max: Fury Road" prequel stars Chris Hemsworth as the villain Dementus and Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger version of Charlize Theron's character.

If you skipped out on seeing it in theaters (which, let's be honest, you probably did, based on its box-office performance ), now's your chance.

Streaming on: Max

Or for action-comedy, watch "Jackpot!"

The new action comedy (from "Bridesmaids" director Paul Feig ) stars Awkwafina as a struggling actress who wins the lottery in near-future Los Angeles. The only problem? It's legal for losers to kill the winner before sundown that day and claim their winnings.

John Cena costars as an "amateur lottery protection agent" who's tasked with keeping her alive in exchange for some of the money.

Streaming on: Prime Video

For horror fans, there's "Immaculate."

This has been one of my top horror movies of the year so far. Sydney Sweeney stars as a young nun at a creepy Italian convent in a far departure from "Anyone But You."

Come for the eerie vibes, stay for the absolutely bonkers ending scene .

Streaming on: Hulu

True crime fans can check out "American Murder: Laci Peterson."

The three-episode docuseries (from acclaimed true-crime director Skye Borgman) examines the disturbing case of Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant with her first child when she was killed. Her husband Scott Peterson , who later confessed to having an affair, was eventually convicted of her brutal murder. (Peterson is currently attempting to prove his innocence and have his conviction overturned.)

Streaming on: Netflix

"Emily in Paris" is back for a new season.

The frothy Netflix hit, starring Lily Collins as American transplant Emily Cooper, returns for its fourth season.

So is "Bel-Air."

The dramatic reimagining of the beloved Will Smith sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (which, reminder, was inspired by a viral fan-made video uploaded to YouTube back in 2019) returns for its third season.

Streaming on: Peacock

If you're looking for dark comedy, tune into "Bad Monkey."

Vince Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, a former Miami detective turned restaurant health inspector. The show was developed by "Ted Lasso" co-creator Bill Lawrence, and adapted from the book of the same name by Carl Hiaasen.

Streaming on: Apple TV+

For a wild true story, check out "Chimp Crazy."

"Tiger King" director Eric Goode returns with this four-part new docuseries about a nurse-turned-exotic animal broker who called herself the "Dolly Parton of chimps."

All the "Alien" movies are streaming on Hulu.

You can catch up on every movie in the "Alien" franchise before you see the latest, "Alien: Romulus," in theaters.

Conveniently, all six of them — the original " Alien," "Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection," "Prometheus," and "Alien: Covenant" — are on the same streamer.

• Main content

From 'Furiosa' to 'The Union,' 15 movies you need to stream right now

Love movies? Live for TV? USA TODAY's Watch Party newsletter has all the best recommendations, delivered right to your inbox.  Sign up now  and be one of the cool kids.

After you hit up the back-to-school sales with your kids, why not head home for a trip through the Wasteland with Furiosa?

George Miller's latest "Mad Max" vehicle leads a noteworthy pack of new movies on Netflix, Peacock, Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime Video, Disney+ and Paramount+. August is packed with streaming options for film lovers of all tastes, from action comedies to all-star heist movies. There are recent theatrical releases, like Sydney Sweeney's holy horror flick and a Tom Hardy/Austin Butler biker gang drama , but also original flicks such as a superspy rom-com with Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg.

Here are 15 notable new movies you can stream right now:

In the over-the-top horror comedy, Melissa Barrera, Kathryn Newton and Dan Stevens star as members of a motley kidnapping crew hired to watch over a ballerina girl (Alisha Weir). She's revealed to be – uh-oh! – a vicious vampire who turns the tables on her captors in a blood-soaked tale that's much twistier than it seems.

Where to watch: Peacock

'The Bikeriders'

Jeff Nichols' gripping crime drama centers on a motorcycle club of Midwestern outsiders whose dealings turn criminal when they invite new blood into the group. Austin Butler is the wild-at-heart troublemaker, Jodie Comer is his worried girlfriend, but Tom Hardy shines as the bikers' mercurial, Brando-esque leader.

'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga'

The busy backstory of Charlize Theron’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” heroine, now played by  Anya Taylor-Joy , gets told in this explosive, world-building epic. A charismatically evil  Chris Hemsworth  is a highlight in this adrenalized revenge thriller full of post-apocalyptic hot rods, gorgeous demolition-derby carnage and demented confidence.

Where to watch: Max

'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire'

More nostalgic than coherent, the latest "Ghostbusters" installment features a massive cast and throwbacks galore. Mckenna Grace leads the newer heroes and Bill Murray heads up the old crew against the new big bad Garraka, a horned phantom who represents a chilly existential threat to New York City (and pretty much all mankind).

Where to watch: Netflix

'Immaculate'

"The First Omen" isn't the only option for nun horror in 2024. Sydney Sweeney stars in this unholy chiller as a young American novice who joins an Italian convent and navigates increasingly unnerving episodes, including finding out she's pregnant. (Fun fact: She's a virgin!) Things just get worse from there, all leading to a bleakly bonkers climax.

Where to watch: Hulu

'The Instigators'

The heist comedy features Matt Damon as a desperate father and Casey Affleck as a snarky ex-con partnered up for a robbery that gets bungled , leading to cops and crooks alike coming after them. It's got issues but not in the supporting cast, led by Hong Chau as the very understanding therapist of Damon's on-the-lam dad.

Where to watch: Apple TV+

There's a fun dystopian Looney Tunes quality to Paul Feig's action comedy, which imagines a future LA where lottery winners have to stay alive till sundown to keep their cash. Awkwafina plays a struggling actress with her life on the line, and John Cena is in earnest goofball mode as the protection agent hired to keep her safe.

Where to watch: Prime Video

'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes'

Will humans and simians ever get along? That existential question is revisited in the latest "Planet of the Apes" adventure, a sprawling coming-of-age sci-fi tale that follows young chimp Noa (Owen Teague) on a quest to save his friends and family who partners with a mysterious girl named Mae (Freya Allan).

'Knox Goes Away'

Michael Keaton directs and stars in the nifty crime thriller as a hitman diagnosed with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, a fast-acting and fatal form of dementia. He's determined to use his final days to help out his estranged son (James Marsden), though the cops are also in hot pursuit after a botched job.

'La Chimera'

Josh O'Connor, one of the best things about the aces tennis flick " Challengers ," is also superb in this Italian dramedy. He plays a British tomb raider who gets out of jail and travels to Italy to meet up with friends, find love and plunder some stolen artifacts in a narrative that turns into quite the emotional cautionary tale.

'Love Lies Bleeding'

Romance sparks between pumped-up Midwestern bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian) and introverted gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart), but that's also when murderous trouble arises in director Rose Glass'  sultry and sweaty neo-noir thriller . If it's not too early to start talking Oscar nods, O'Brian is phenomenal in a star-making turn.

The moving period biopic tells the story of London broker Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of Jewish children in Prague with Nazi forces on the march in 1938. Johnny Flynn plays Winton as a young man racing to help the kids while Anthony Hopkins is the older Nicholas recalling his humanitarian efforts and wishing he could have done more.

Where to watch: Paramount+

OK, it's not the greatest, but kids wanting to dip their toes into horror could do worse. On-the-rise youngsters like Avantika ("Mean Girls") and Jacob Batalon ("Spider-Man: Homecoming") star in the PG-13 film about college pals who use a cursed deck of tarot cards and discover their eerie readings are coming to bizarre and fatal fruition.

'The Union'

A New Jersey construction worker (Mark Wahlberg) runs into his high school sweetheart (Halle Berry) in a bar. He thinks she wants to get back together, but instead, she's now a superspy who recruits him for a dangerous mission to retrieve a stolen list of secret agents. Cue the rom-com shenanigans, globetrotting action and A-list flirting.

'Young Woman and the Sea'

Like "Nyad," but better and way more rousing. "Star Wars" alum Daisy Ridley is hugely engaging in this extremely Disney-fied biopic as pioneering athlete Trudy Ederle, who conquered Olympic disappointment, misogyny and jellyfish to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926.

Where to watch: Disney+

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Jackpot!’ Review: Dystopia, Hollywood Style

Awkwafina and John Cena star in a fitfully funny near-future comedy with strangely mixed metaphors.

• Share full article

By Alissa Wilkinson

In the near future, things are not very different. People wear the same clothes as we do, ride the bus to work, call each other on cellphones and stay in terrible Airbnbs run by hosts from hell. In the near future, everything is still expensive. And if you want to be an actor, you move to Los Angeles.

Yet a few things have changed. Following the Great Depression of 2026, the government of California — as desperate for money as its people are — instituted a Grand Lottery in which one citizen of Los Angeles wins some huge sum. Sounds great, but unfortunately whoever wrote the law seems to be a fan of “The Purge.” Until sundown on Lottery Day, anyone who successfully kills the lottery winner (all weapons allowed except guns) gets the winnings. After sundown, murder becomes illegal again, until next year.

Somehow the Michigander Katie (Awkwafina) missed this news, and thus had the bad fortune to arrive in Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting the night before Lottery Day 2030. She, of course, accidentally wins the $3.6 billion jackpot while at an audition. Suddenly, everyone is after her, and the only person she can maybe trust is a “freelance protector” named Noel (John Cena, who may be Hollywood’s most dependably funny actor). He’ll get her safely to sundown. Probably.

This is quite the dystopian view of the future, though other movies have proposed that within a few decades, we’ll resort to state-sanctioned violence to secure our daily bread. In the world of Boots Riley’s comedy “ Sorry to Bother You ,” for instance, game show contestants beat themselves to a pulp to collect money and pay off their debts. Or, of course, there’s “ Squid Game .”

More dystopian, though, is the sense that in this version of the near future, nobody is capable of relating to anyone except through money. Only hours into her new L.A. life, Katie tells off a man (Adam Ray) who’s complaining loudly about his young daughter’s failure to get acting jobs that will line his pockets — as his daughter sits right next to him. Moments later, Katie meets a kind older woman (Becky Ann Baker) who wishes her luck, and then, quietly, swipes Katie’s watch.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• Rent or buy
• Categories Categories
• Getting Started

Customers also watched

Cast and Crew

46 global ratings

How are ratings calculated? Toggle Expand Toggle Expand

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Jackpot! Review

John cena-awkwafina team-up doesn't know what it wants to be..

Jackpot! premieres on Prime Video Thursday, August 15.

For many people, winning the lottery is a dream like no other. But there are many horrifying possibilities that accompany a grand prize awarded at random, and they’ve animated the imaginations of artists of all kinds, be they an acclaimed author like Shirley Jackson or a maestro of cinematic spectacle and schlock like Michael Bay. Add to that list Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, whose Jackpot! presents its own unique sweepstakes: Winners of a near-future Los Angeles’ so-called Grand Lottery must stay alive until sundown in order to claim their money, which may be swiped by anyone who kills them.

The dystopia isn’t far from the dour realities that Black Mirror often presents, but Feig and writer Rob Yescombe are aiming for comedy. This absurd version of L.A. – with its wealth inequality overemphasized by the rich stepping over homeless people to the tune of Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” and practically every character being a wannabe performer of some sort, including protagonist Katie Kim (Awkwafina) – is a fun concept, chock full of possibility. But it ends up feeling a bit superficial in execution. Feig and Yescombe are content to their premise as window dressing, rather than engaging with the ludicrousness of legalized, for-profit murder or actually mining the ridiculous personalities it introduces for anything more than a passing gag. When Katie unsuspectingly receives the Grand Lottery’s biggest pot ever – something she doesn’t even quite understand as she only just moved to L.A. – the entire city sets its sights on her, with her only defense being the for-hire bodyguard (John Cena) who arrives in the nick-of-time while she’s first being attacked.

What's the best L.A. movie?

Pick a winner.

As ridiculous and potentially entertaining as it all sounds, Jackpot! is constantly torn between being a riotous comedy, a sincere drama, and a sprawling action picture. With Feig never choosing to stick to a single one of these modes – perhaps foolishly believing he could nail all three – the film never quite hits any peaks in any form. As in The Heat and Spy , his attempts at action filmmaking are the most frustrating, with the majority of Jackpot!’s fights and chases feeling watered down, except for those rare instances where it leans into slapstick and gleeful rag-doll tossing. There are moments when the movie looks like it could veer into the realm of, say, Jackie Chan’s superior ’80s action-comedies, but there’s simply no real interest in the staging or choreography beyond a couple of playfully deployed weapons.

Jackpot! features as many perfectly landed one-liners as it does dull jokes, and it’s served poorly by Feig’s anonymous brand of comedy filmmaking. His work lives and dies on the charisma of its stars – actors like Kristen Wiig or Melissa McCarthy have elevated the bare bones scripting of previous Feig projects, which is often sidelined in favor of tossed-off banter or improvisation. Jackpot!’s leads certainly aren’t bad, but they are limited in their abilities as actors in both comedy and action. Awkwafina’s typical shtick is thankfully toned down here, but Cena goes for broke – and the results are both good and bad. What they both handle shockingly well is the sincerity of Jackpot!, their characters’ relationship, and their backstories. Every time the story slows down to build upon their bonding, both actors deliver their lines with a real weight, like they aren’t just pawns in a middling action-comedy whose thin screenplay seems largely designed to accommodate more cheap joke inserts. But that’s exactly what makes the rest of Jackpot!, and its inability to blend its many, disparate ingredients into a satisfying whole, all the more frustrating.

Jackpot! Gallery

The true treasures are found in the supporting cast, with actors like Seann William Scott, Dolly de Leon, and Murray Hill providing refreshment in their literal mere moments on screen. Ayden Mayeri is the standout here, playing a fellow aspiring actress renting out a bedroom (and clothes) to Katie who, unsurprisingly, turns on her tenant as soon as she can. She’s pitch perfect, excelling not only at retorts, one-liners, and giving her scene partners a leg up, but also with the couple of physical-comedy bits she’s given. It's a crime that Mayeri and others are sidelined for a suffocating Machine Gun Kelly cameo or a major role for Simu Liu in which Awkwafina's Shang-Chi co-star lacks any sense of real comic timing. The talented comedians in smaller parts don’t get their chance to shine during the film proper – that’s limited to a gag reel that lasts throughout the entire end credits. Hill, whose brand of camp would have worked wonders throughout, gets stuck in as a post-credits gag implying the potential of a sequel.

And that’s the biggest problem with Jackpot!: It fails to embrace all the things that could make it great. Even its title, changed from the charmingly on-the-nose Grand Death Lotto, betrays a comfort with settling. It’s not technically bad , but it’s not especially good either. It’s just a shame that a film that opens with a blast of an action sequence and whose setup yields tons of well-scripted humor can’t quite manage to find the right groove.

Jackpot! is about as exciting as having to split a $22 million prize with everyone who played. Just because the numbers are right – and, boy, does this feel like director Paul Feig is painting by numbers – doesn’t mean you really won anything. Capable leads John Cena and Awkwafina are more than game, but endlessly outshined by the film’s bit players, like the one and only Ayden Mayeri, whose vapid, villainous ways are sorely missed whenever they’re off screen.

In This Article

Where to Watch

Not yet available for streaming.

More Reviews by Juan Barquin

Ign recommends.

• Login / Sign Up
• Entertainment
• Twisters, Netflix’s The Union, and every movie new to streaming this week

The disaster thriller starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell blows onto VOD this weekend

by Toussaint Egan and Petrana Radulovic

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Twisters , the standalone sequel to 1996’s Twister starring Daisy Edgar-Jones ( Normal People ) and Glen Powell ( Anyone But You ), finally blows its way onto VOD. If you’d rather not go chasing tornadoes, I don’t blame you; there’s lots of other exciting releases on streaming to choose from this month. We’ve got the new spy thriller The Union starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry on Netflix, the Purge-like action comedy Jackpot! on Prime Video, the streaming debut of Immaculate on Hulu and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on Max — which also has a new “Black and Chrome” version which just released on VOD this week.

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Spy comedy Run time: 1h 39m Director: Julian Farino Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry, Mike Colter

Mark Wahlberg plays Mike, just your average blue-collar construction worker, who reunites with his high school sweetheart Roxanne (Halle Berry), who is revealed to be a secret agent. Mike gets pulled into the high-stakes world of espionage because, as it turns out, the identity of every spy in Roxanne’s agency has been compromised, so they need to tap in a plucky, street-smart nobody to help save the world. Oh, and J.K. Simmons is there!

Genre: Documentary Run time: 1h 42m Directors: Angela Patton, Natalie Rae

This documentary follows four girls with incarcerated fathers as they get ready for the Daddy Daughter dance at the prison, one of the very few opportunities they get to meet physically. Their fathers, meanwhile, undergo a Fatherhood Training Program that helps them emotionally prepare for this moment. Daughters won two awards at Sundance Film Festival.

They Shot The Piano Player

Genre: Musical docudrama Run time: 1h 43m Directors: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Tony Ramos, Abel Ayala

This animated docudrama follows a music journalist (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) who embarks on a globe-trotting journey to uncover the truth behind Francisco Tenório Júnior, a Brazilian samba-jazz pianist who was instrumental in popularizing Bossa Nova music, and the reason behind his sudden mysterious disappearance.

New on Hulu

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Genre: Psychological horror Run time: 1h 29m Director: Michael Mohan Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Benedetta Porcaroli

Sydney Sweeney ( Euphoria ) stars in this new supernatural horror movie as Cecilia, a devout nun who is invited to serve at a beautiful secluded convent to tend to ailing nuns on their deathbeds. Upon arriving, Cecilia quickly discovers that the convent has much more in store for her, as she awakens to discover she is miraculously pregnant.

From our review :

From the beginning, Immaculate director Michael Mohan is thoroughly committed to delivering a throwback exploitation movie of exorbitant sleaze. There may not be any outright sex in the movie, but there are long scenes of nuns taking baths in skimpy white dresses, and leering priests lurking around every corner that interrogate Cecilia over her virgin status — only to verify the purity and truth of their coming savior, of course. Immaculate also has more graphic blood, guts, and gore than most action movies these days. All of these little elements are hallmarks of prime 1970s nunsploitation , the horror offshoot specifically centered on the cloth.

New on Prime Video

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Genre: Action comedy Run time: 1h 44m Director: Paul Feig Cast: John Cena, Awkwana, Simu Liu

Jackpot! is like The Purge … but with a comedic twist. In this world, anyone who loses the lottery gets to hunt the winner, and if they murder the winner before sundown, they get the jackpot (get it?). Awkwafina plays a struggling actress who’s the lucky lottery winner, so long as she can stay alive by the time the sun goes down. She hires a lottery protection agent (played by John Cena) to help keep her alive.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Where to watch: Available to stream on Max

Genre: Sci-fi action Run time: 2h 28m Director: George Miller Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

Mad Max director George Miller has returned with another explosive entry in his post-apocalyptic action series. Set an indeterminate amount of years before Mad Max: Fury Road , Anya Taylor-Joy ( The Queen’s Gambit ) stars as Furiosa, a young woman who struggles to reclaim her freedom after being kidnapped by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the ruthless leader of an army of bikers. Along the way, she’ll cross paths with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), her future boss-turned-adversary, and Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), her mentor and ally.

An epic, nearly 20-year saga likely isn’t what most people were expecting from Furiosa , but the approach allows the world to expand in pleasing ways. The MCU-ification of cinema means that franchise blockbusters often reveal characters, important MacGuffins, narrative loose ends, and potential sequel nods in bite-size teases that are less and less likely to lead anywhere . But with Furiosa , Miller widens the scope of the Mad Max landscape exponentially, as characters old and new blast their way onto the screen, giving clearer insight into the setting of the Wasteland, its societal hierarchies, its gasoline-fueled wars, and its steampunk-hued reality.

New on Metrograph at Home

Where to watch: Available to stream on Metrograph at Home

Genre: Comedy drama Run time: 1h 58m Director: Shinji Sōmai Cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Michiko Kawai, Masatoshi Nagase

Based on a story written by Leonard Schrader — the brother of writer-director Paul Schrader —this quirky, 1983 melancholic drama newly restored follows three high school friends who journey across Japan in order to save the life of a bully who has been kidnapped by the Yakuza. Why are they trying to rescue him? Why, to get their own revenge on the bully before he’s killed, of course!

Typhoon Club

Genre: Teenage drama Run time: 1h 55m Director: Shinji Sōmai Cast: Yuichi Mikami, Youki Kudoh, Tomokazu Miura

This one’s another streaming premiere of a restoration on Metrograph at Home. Set over the course of five days, this 1985 adolescent drama follows a group of junior high kids who are trapped inside their school during a typhoon. Cut off from the outside world with no adult supervision, the school becomes a powder keg for the student’s pent-up angst, exploding in series of fantastical sequences that blur the line between reality and imagination. How will their lives be changed from this experience after the storm inevitably subsides? You’ll have to watch Typhoon Club to find out.

New to rent

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon , Apple , and Vudu

Genre: Disaster thriller Run time: 2h 2m Director: Lee Isaac Chung Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos

Director Lee Isaac Chung follows up his 2020 breakthrough Minari with a standalone sequel to the 1996 film Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell, Twisters follows a dueling group of storm chasers as they attempt to navigate and survive a outbreak of tornadoes wreaking havoc through Oklahoma.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Black & Chrome Edition)

Move over Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color — there’s a new monochromatic version of a recent sci-fi movie release in town! Like 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road , Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has received its own “Black and Chrome” version, transforming the colorful cacophonous spectacle of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic action movie into a black and white movie about the moral grey area between revenge and retribution in a world gone mad. You’ll have to watch this version yourself to see which one you prefer.

Watchmen: Chapter 1

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon , Apple, and Vudu

Genre: Superhero drama Run time: 1h 23m Director: Brandon Vietti Cast: Troy Baker, Adrienne Barbeau, Corey Burton

Watchmen is back, this time as a multi-part animate film series! In an alternate 1985, a government-sponsored superhero has been inexplicably murdered. Determine to apprehend his killer, a costumed vigilante named Rorschach reunites with his estranged former colleagues scores the criminal underworld of New York is his search for clues. What he uncovers is a conspiracy that threatens to endanger the entire world. Will he be able to track down the conspirators before it’s too late?

National Anthem

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 39m Director: Luke Gilford Cast: Eve Lindley, Charlie Plummer, Mason Alexander

Charlie Plummer ( Looking for Alaska ) stars in this coming-of-age drama as Dylan, a 21-year-old construction worker trying to support his younger brother and alcoholic mother in rural New Mexico. After crossing paths with a close-knit community of queer ranchers and rodeo performers, Dylan find himself navigating his own sense of sexuality and the emotional challenges that come with newfound love, life, and family.

Mother’s Instinct

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Genre: Psychological drama Run time: 1h 34m Director: Benoit Delhomme Cast: Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Josh Charles

Benoit Delhomme’s period drama stars Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as Alice and Céline, two housewives with a sisterly bond who live next door to one another in an picturesque 1960s American suburb. When their idyllic lives are upended by inexplicable tragedy, the harmony of their daily existence is shattered by paranoia, grief, and barely concealed rage exploding to the surface.

Genre: Historical drama Run time: 1h 45m Director: Jake Paltrow Cast: Tzahi Grad, Joy Rieger, Koby Aderet

Director Jake Paltrow’s latest film explores the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the principal architect of the Holocaust, from the perspective of several individuals who were either present or involved in some way with this historic reckoning.

Based on true accounts, June Zero follows the story of Haim (Yoav Levi), a Moroccan Jew tasked with protecting Eichmann during his trial; Shlomi (Tzahi Grad), a soldier-turned-factory owner commissioned to build an oven to cremate Eichmann’s remains; David (Noam Ovadia), an Israeli teenager working in Shlomi’s factory; and Micha (Tom Hagi), an Auschwitz survivor who becomes the chief interrogator of Eichmann’s trial.

Most Popular

• The best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix this August
• SteamWorld Heist 2 is a multi-classing masterwork
• Justice League Unlimited does the ‘mature Batman cartoon’ job better than Caped Crusader
• Why did the ending of The Umbrella Academy suck so much?

Patch Notes

The best of Polygon in your inbox, every Friday.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Movies

The Latest ⚡️