EDDINGTON (2025)

There is a lot going on in director Ari Aster’s Eddington. It’s namesake is a small town in New Mexico and stage for a new age western hurtling us back in time to 2020. Halfway into its 2 hour and 28 minute runtime, I started to see it as an adult, bizarro version of The Smurfs. However, instead of Brainy, Hefty and Clumsy, we’re introduced to Emasculated Smurf, Pizzagate Smurf, Social Justice Smurf, Conspiracy Smurf, Mask Mandate Smurf and just about every other extreme personality/point-of-view from this exact time in America. You would think that with all of these specific and interesting caricatures to present, and its taking place during the Covid lockdown and immediately following the death of George Floyd, the film would feel busy and quick. Sadly no. Its slow; watching-and-hearing-every-literal-step slow. But with Joaquin Phoenix as sheriff Joe Cross at its centre, one knows it’s just a matter of time before this powder keg ignites. And thankfully it really does, starting with a bristling turn by Austin Butler as the cult-leader Vernon Jefferson Peak, whose unnerving appearance and proximity to Cross’ wife Louise (Emma Stone) is merely a formality, as Cross is already mid jump into his downfall. And what a drop. The second and better half of the film spirals into something more in line with the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple (1985) and No Country For Old Men (2007), which I quite enjoyed. But unlike Smurfs, with their orderly personalities and straightforward morals planting points like flowers in their village, Cross’ hubris and ineffectual lot leads to little else than an entertaining detonation of chaos in Eddington.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: I enjoyed Eddington’s anarchy, but not its apathy. Perhaps this was the point. Call me old-school, but I would have preferred a main character I cared about. But I knew what I was getting into with Aster and Phoenix. I like to think there’s an alternative version out there somewhere, with Butler playing the sheriff as an idealistic everyman and Phoenix leaning in to the role of the disconcerting cult leader.