Starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomas, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey and Dacre Montgomery.
Written by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce & Jeremy Doner.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann.
★★★½
Baz Luhrmann is nothing if he is not a showman, and so it seems the perfect marriage of someone like Baz to take on the larger-than-life Elvis Presley in a biopic that's exhilarating and tragic. I don't know how much Elvis has to say to the 21st century, but in a time where carny-type con-men control so much behind the scenes, it feels timely to tell this story now.
Austin Butler, currently best known as the murderous cowboy-hippie Tex from Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, gives a star-making performance here. I eventually forgot about him and felt like I'm just watching Elvis.
Our narrator, however, is not the King himself, but his Svengali manager Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). "There are some who might see me as the villain in this story," he foreshadows in his odd Dutch accent. As soon as you see and hear him, it takes a moment to decide whether or not to accept what Hanks is going for here. I accepted it, and I saw it as a tightrope-walking performance. Parker feels like an anti-hero con-artist at first, and his ambition did help get Elvis into the national spotlight, but Parker is also one who stayed latched on to Elvis's back like a tick, sucking his meal-ticket dry.
Baz bounces through Elvis's childhood, his instant stardom, his unlikely fame, his hypnotic performances that frightened a Greatest Generation of Dads watching their daughters lose their minds to this hip-swiveling greaser. Who was this southern white boy hanging out with Black entertainers in the segregated 1950's, making their rhythm 'n' blues sound go mainstream? (I was glad his friendship with BB King got as much screen-time as it did.) As we get deep into the 1960's, the movie slows down and we get a better idea of who Elvis really is.
I sat there as the credits rolled, grateful for Elvis's place in music history in a way that I hadn't felt before, but also sad at the lost potential. What if Elvis had figured out around 1965 that Parker was a vampire holding him back more than he was helping his career get to the next level? He's the greatest-selling solo recording artist ever, and yet, if he hadn't been filled with drugs and thrown on the Vegas stage every night while filming C-grade movies during the day, how much higher could he have soared?
It's a movie that asks people to examine their own lives. Who really loves you for you vs. who lets you self-destruct because of how they selfishly benefit off of you? Sadly, Elvis didn't figure out the answer soon enough, and he died alone of a heart attack at age 42.
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