Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 0.5
Soderbergh continues his downhill slide into total irrelevance with this astoundingly shallow portrait of a male stripper-by-night/construction worker-by day (Channing Tatum) who befriends a 19-year-old (Alex Pettyfer), drags him into the stripping business (run, in Tampa, by Matthew McConaughey, who had a career year in 2012) and watching as he gets into trouble with drugs. As director of photography, Soderbergh continues trying to make every shot as hideously jaundice-hued as possible; the script by Reid Carolin offers few surprises and the cast - aside from the astounding McConaughey (chewing up every scene with sweaty determination) - is merely serviceable. The scenes of the male strippers dancing are filmed with an air of detachment by Soderbergh, and by its conclusion one might be left wondering what, exactly, is the point: it's neither scintillating, nor much of a morality tale nor powerful as dramatic expose of an industry. It's tinted nothingness.
