Narrated by Justin Timberlake as Private Pilot Abilene, a government crowd-control operative stationed on the Santa Monica pier with a huge gun, the movie is the story of Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson). Boxer is a movie star and the husband of a presidential candidate's daughter. Unfortunately, he has no memory of this and most of the world considers him missing or dead. He lives near the beach with his girlfriend Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Grudge, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who is a porn star. Together, the pair has written a screenplay about the end of the world. The odd thing is, the events of that screenplay are happening in real life, except both Boxer and Krysta are a bit too dense to realize it.
In this alternate timeline, the government has a mass surveillance system that keeps a watch on everyone known as USIDent, and thanks to a remarkable breakthrough by Baron Von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn, The Princess Bride), America is no longer dependant on fossil fuels. Instead, scientists have harnessed the power of the ocean and through an understanding of quantum mechanics, is able to power compatible devices remotely.
Southland Tales isn't solely about Boxer though. There are a few other groups whose stories are told in the movie, but all of the tales are intertwined and connected (even if the characters don't know it), and all of the stories lead to the movie's ending. Besides Boxer and Krysta, there is Krysta's left-wing extremists friends who are trying to rig the election with their knowledge of Boxer's whereabouts. There is also a small movement that refers to itself as Neo Marxists, who are bent on tearing down the system.
The Neo Marxists seem to have an interesting plan. They are led by Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott, American Pie, The Rundown) and they have kidnapped his twin brother of a cop, in the hopes of framing him for a racial murder in order to throw chaos into the system. As you can expect, noone's plans go quite like they expect them to. The Neo Marxists try to enlist the help of the amnesiac Boxer (covertly, of course) in order to stage murders filmed as a part of Boxer's ride-along for his research, but when another cop appears on the staged scene, even the best laid plans go up in smoke.
In the end, Southland Tales becomes a strange movie involving everything from a big brother government, to dark humor, to paradoxical circumstances. So, you would thing a movie as odd as this with the sheer number of names it has attached to it should be somewhat entertaining to watch. In the end, though, it just comes off as weird and a lot of the dialogue just seems forced. It is obvious that Writer/Director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) has a message he is trying to say, and that message is loud and clear, but I found myself wondering exactly what was going on more times than enjoying it.
If there is one thing this movie has, it's a lot of names. Besides the aforementioned main characters, actors like Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Curtis Armstrong and Jon Lovitz all make appearances as supporting, but vital, people. Unfortunately, even this collection of names isn't enough to save the film from its strange storyline and, quite frankly, overly-preachy feel. While seeing Seann William Scott and The Rock meet up again and thinking about Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star might be appealing to most people, this film should only be watched if you are in the mood for dry humor and a tale that doesn't make all that much sense.
