{"id":227968,"date":"2025-09-15T05:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227968\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T05:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:37:15","slug":"expendable-billionaires-dance-on-edge-of-a-volcano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227968\/","title":{"rendered":"Expendable Billionaires Dance on Edge of a Volcano"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHow many rebellious movies about ganging up to overthrow the status quo does one need to make before uneasy governments start to put you on some kind of watch list? For Romain Gavras<\/a>, son of the legendary \u201cZ\u201d director and political critic Costa-Gavras, the count now stands at three. First, there was his 2010 debut, \u201cOur Day Will Come,\u201d an unnerving call-to-action in which redheads inherit the earth, followed by the white-knuckle \u201cAthena,\u201d about an uprising in a Paris apartment bloc. Now comes the splashy \u201cSacrifice<\/a>,\u201d which takes a more satirical view of ecoterrorism and the end of days.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSacrifice\u201d feels like the music-video director\u2019s reaction to Ruben \u00d6stlund\u2019s brand of comedy, an elevated form of irony that has earned the Swedish director (who started out making snowboarding videos for a ski resort) two Palme d\u2019Or trophies for his films \u201cTriangle of Sadness\u201d and \u201cThe Square.\u201d There\u2019s a similar look and feel to Gavras\u2019 sleek contemporary critique, though it\u2019s a hard formula to match, requiring a masterly control of both tension and humor that Gavras struggles to achieve.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter opening with a violent cult ritual intended to put us on edge, \u201cSacrifice\u201d shifts its attention to an insecure American movie star en route to an elite environmental summit somewhere in Greece. Fretting about all things frivolous in the back seat of a stretch limousine, Mike Tyler (Chris Evans<\/a>) realizes at the last minute that his gas-guzzling entrance isn\u2019t such a great look, so he asks the driver to pull over and walks the last few steps \u2026 for the earth\u2019s sake. <\/p>\n

\n\tDressed in white, Mike is no hero, but he\u2019s played his share of them on the big screen. That was before his recent mental breakdown \u2014 which culminated in a flamethrower incident his agent (Sam Richardson) does his best not to mention (the way Tom Cruise\u2019s people no doubt steer clear of his couch-jumping gaffe). Mike\u2019s hardly the first celebrity to question whether he might serve some higher purpose. The problem is, he doesn\u2019t stand for anything and seems to be openly searching for a cause of some kind. Perhaps that\u2019s what brings him to this tony charity gala, hosted by wealthy industrialist Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel) and his wife Gloria (Salma Hayek Pinault).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe event takes place at the Volakas marble quarry, a spectacular location, with its temple-like fa\u00e7ade and vast network of excavated chambers, a short distance from an active volcano. As the well-dressed donors assemble for a banquet in one of the space\u2019s larger halls, it\u2019s hard not to think of the performance-art scene in \u00d6stlund\u2019s \u201cThe Square,\u201d in which a man playing a gorilla wound up attacking the guests. In Gavras\u2019 version, it\u2019s guerrillas we have to worry about, as a gang of ecological warriors led by Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) infiltrate the gathering.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe biggest laugh in this irreverent and frequently outrageous satire comes when Joan and company choose to burst in on the festivities. They could have interrupted the self-serving speeches and craven virtue-signaling (Bracken\u2019s solution to ransacking the earth\u2019s surface is to mine the ocean floor instead), but instead, the fashionably dressed militia appear at the tail end of a high-concept concert featuring Charli xcx as the ailing \u201cMother Nature.\u201d When two dozen blond kids rush in with guns, it takes the crowd a moment to realize this isn\u2019t part of the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat nearby volcano is primed to explode, and only Joan and company seem to understand that this will be a cataclysmic event for the planet. The movie seems to believe this prophecy, and though an eruption appears imminent, it\u2019s not clear why it should be any worse than previous ones. So Joan and company have taken it upon themselves to intercede. They\u2019ve been training their entire lives for this moment, convinced that only one thing will quell the impending disaster: a human sacrifice. (Or three human sacrifices, to be precise.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Joan (the radicalized child of a brilliant scientist, played by John Malkovich), her followers must choose a King, a partner \u2014 or \u201cTrue Love\u201d \u2014 for her brother (Jonatan \u201cYung Lean\u201d Leandoer) and a Hero, all of whom must be thrown into volcano. Gavras presents this mystic mumbo jumbo in such a way that we are meant to question whether Joan could be right. More to the point, Mike Tyler finds himself wondering whether this could be his calling. As casting goes, Evans admirably pokes holes in his own persona, but doesn\u2019t seem nearly unstable enough. If ever there was a role for Shia LaBeouf, this is it.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoments before the eco-terrorists burst in, the self-centered star interrupted the benefit to decry the hypocrisy of all those gathered there. But when called upon to make a difference, he\u2019s not so sure where he stands. As in Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 semi-similar, equally far-fetched \u201cBugonia,\u201d a movie like \u201cSacrifice\u201d hinges on how fictional characters respond to science-fictional situations. In other words, the filmmaker is God and ultimately gets to choose whether to have mercy on those we might otherwise deem mentally ill.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a virtuosity to Gavras\u2019 filmmaking, which yields some surprising laughs and thrills along the way. But there\u2019s no world in which this volcano would obliterate all life, and no scientist who would corroborate Malkovich\u2019s explanation that a chemical in some people\u2019s blood can solidify molten lava \u2014 which makes whatever happens a leap of faith. Of all Gavras\u2019 cine-revolutions, this one is both most familiar and the farthest removed from our reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How many rebellious movies about ganging up to overthrow the status quo does one need to make before…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":227969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7700,171,53,114591,111947,77123,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-227968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-chris-evans","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-romain-gavras","12":"tag-sacrifice","13":"tag-toronto-film-festival","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115206700642293414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}