SUNDOWN - Tuesday 12th July 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SUNDOWN' earlier this week, and this Mexican, French and Swedish Co-Produced drama film is Written, Co-Produced, Directed and Co-Edited by Michel Franco whose previous film making offerings include 'After Lucia' in 2012 that won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes, 'Chronic' in 2015 with Tim Roth and 'New Order' in 2020 with Diego Boneta. The film has garnered generally favourable reviews, and has so far grossed US$372K since its release in the US at the end of January having seen its World Premier as the Venice Film Festival back in September last year.  

Neil Bennett (Tim Roth, who also Executive Produces here), a quiet introverted man from London, is on vacation in Acapulco, Mexico with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two young adult children, Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan). They stay in a luxurious resort hotel overlooking the ocean and eat at up market restaurants. Day after day, the family participates in a variety of fun activities, or just lounging beside and in their own private pool. Neil, however, is seemingly not enjoying himself. 

One day, Alice receives a phone call telling her that her mother is being taken to the hospital back in England. Following this news, the family immediately prepares to go home. On the way to the airport the next morning, Alice takes a second call informing her that her mother has passed away. Alice bursts into tears while Neil remains very calm and matter of fact. At the airport, Neil says he left his passport at the hotel, so the rest of the family are forced into flying out without him.

Neil lied about the passport, as it was in his suitcase the whole time, and he decided to stay in Acapulco, at least for the next few days. He gets to know a local taxi driver named Jorge Campos (Jesus Godinez), who takes him to a small cheap downbeat hotel. Neil whiles away the day by eating at cheap beachside restaurants, drinking beers and visiting the very crowded local beach. Alice calls him repeatedly to come home but he soon gets tired of her insistence and starts to ignore her calls and messages left. Instead he starts dating a friendly local named Berenice (Iazua Larios). One day he returns to his hotel room to find his belongings have seemingly been stolen, but he exhibits very little reaction to this, accepting it for what it is. The next day while he and Berenice are at the beach, he observes two men approaching the beach at high speed on a jet ski. They pull up and one gets off and walks up to another guy and shoots him dead at point blank range in broad daylight, and then departs immediately afterwards from whence they came. They both witness this, as did numerous others at the time, yet Neil remains apathetic to the whole affair.

Some two weeks later Alice returns to Acapulco and confronts Neil at the beach in a heated one sided conversation about him abandoning her in her days of need. She promptly leaves when she has said all she is going to. As it turns out the Bennett family is extremely wealthy because they are in the meat processing business with farms and abattoirs up and down the country back in the UK. Neil calls Alice and asks if they can meet. After briefly talking about the family business and saying it was never about the money, Neil signs a document relinquishing his assets and inheritance in the presence of the family lawyer, Richard (Henry Goodman). Alice however, agrees to a monthly stipend of £10,000 for as long as he shall live, which should set him up very nicely in Acapulco. 

Later, on the way to the airport Alice is shot and killed by a gang of three car jackers, driven by Jorge. The Police arrest Neil, believing he ordered the assassination as he was seen talking to the three on several occasions down by the beach. Neil bursts into tears upon learning about his sister's death from a newspaper article. His representatives arrive and tell him that the company is now his. After Richard gets him out of prison, after being locked up in very cramped conditions with half of Mexico's low life crims for a few days, Richard orders their driver to take him and Neil straight to the airport. Neil however, has other plans and asks to be returned to his hotel, much to Richard's bemusement. He continues seeing Berenice and spending time at the beach. Sometime later, Richard, Colin, and Alexa confront him in his hotel room unannounced. Alexa hits Neil in the head with an empty beer bottle. Later, Neil signs off the rights to the family company to Colin and Alexa. Neil, in return, will still receive his monthly pension, £100,000 as a once off down payment and have his private health insurance maintained until he dies. After the meeting, Neil returns to Berenice, with the other three departing straightaway back to England. Neil, once again shows no emotion or empathy at all. 

Sometime later, after Neil and Berenice return to her apartment Neil collapses down a flight of stairs carrying an esky full of beers. Berenice takes him to the hospital, where she learns Neil has advanced cancer that has metastasised to his frontal lobe and the Doctor recommends beginning chemo therapy immediately at a specialist hospital in Mexico City. After Berenice falls asleep by his side, Neil collects up his belongings, abandons her and walks down the streets of Mexico City alone at night. Abruptly we cut from his sullen face to an image of the beach's waves breaking on the shoreline some days following, the glaring sunshine, and the shirt and shoes Neil was wearing the night he walked away from the hospital, left unattended on the back of a chair with a beer bottle on a table nearby.

'Sundown' is a film that won't be for everyone that's for sure, and I'm not even sure it was for me! There is no doubt that Tim Roth's understated introverted and bored millionaire Neil Bennet is meticulously played out with all the nuances of a man who has reached the end of his tether and who doesn't really care about anything or anyone. This is hardly an uplifting film either, it's a slow burn, leaves numerous questions unanswered, and when the ending comes after a brisk 82 minute run time I was left thinking where's the final ten minutes that would tie all those unanswered questions together and provide for a less unambiguous conclusion. On the positive front there is Tim Roth's and Charlotte Gainsbourg's performances, the cinematography which depicts both the richer and the poorer side of Mexican life, the random acts of violence that are seemingly all too real in that part of the world, and as a character study it works. 

'Sundown' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-