Tim Roth wanders through "Sundown" like a man whose mission is avoidance: of responsibility, of expectations, of life.
He plays Neil, a man on vacation in sunny Acapulco with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two teenage children (Samuel Bottomley and Albertine Kotting McMillan). They're living the good life at a posh resort when Alice suddenly gets a phone call that their mother has died. They rush to the airport to return back to London but Neil doesn't board the plane. He forgot his passport back at the hotel, and he'll grab the next flight out.
Except he didn't, and he doesn't. And that's where writer-director Michel Franco's desolate drama begins to take form.
Rather than returning to the luxe resort, Neil holes up at a grungy hotel. He wastes his days at the beach, spending time with a local named Bernice (Iazua Larios). He's so utterly unbothered that when he witnesses a jet ski drive-by at the beach in broad daylight, he hardly looks up from his drink.
An alternate title for "Sundown" could be "What's Going on With Neil?" It's a good question, and the answers are parsed out slowly, when they're parsed out at all.
Neil goes from simply ignoring his sister's phone calls to ditching his phone altogether, stashing it in a drawer. It turns out Neil and his family are heirs to a massive UK meatpacking fortune, to which Neil isn't interested. Why? His health may have something to do with it, and so might his conscience. And so might his general apathy toward life, which Franco frames from afar in this look at society, the class systems and the dangers of modern Acapulco.
"Sundown" is a mixed bag, part psychological drama, part intentionally inscrutable enigma. Roth — his shoulders slumped, his facial features wilted — is fascinating as a man who seems to have entirely given up. Too often, however, "Sundown" seems to follow Neil's lead. It's a lot, and at the same time it simply isn't enough.
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'SUNDOWN'
Grade: C+
MPAA rating: R (for sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity)
Running time: 1:22
Where to watch: Now in theaters and on demand
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