AGGRO DR1FT offers a chaotic, vibrant welcome to exciting life

This review by AGGRO DR1FT was originally released following its screening at the 2023 New York Film Festival. It was updated and re-released for the film’s limited theatrical release.

It’s rare to see a film that challenges fundamental ideas about how films are made or what they should look like. It’s even rarer to see a film in this mode that’s actually fun. AGGRO DR1FTout of spring breakers And The beach bum Director Harmony Korine, made in collaboration with Rapper and music producer Travis Scott, certainly doesn’t look like a traditional film, but it’s no exception to the rule either. It’s strange and mostly uneventful – some viewers will probably move on after five minutes or less. But it’s also extremely fascinating in the rare moments when it’s actually coherent.

AGGRO DR1FT follows BO (Jordi Mollà), a middle-aged man who loves his wife and children very much. He is also the world’s greatest assassin. He tells both directly to the audience, through omnipresent voice-over narration. The majority of the film shows BO aimlessly wandering around Florida from one meeting to the next. The encounters are only connected through his narration, which only seems to be related to the plot about half the time. The plot, as it exists, concerns BO’s attempt to assassinate the Beast, a demonic villain with giant wings who wields two katanas and hangs out with scantily clad women, whom he sometimes keeps in cages.

It’s not really clear what the Beast did to get the contract that was handed to him, but at one point he stands between two women in bikinis and chants, “Dance, bitch.” Dance, bitch” over and over until the scene finally cuts out and BO’s narration says, “There’s magic in this brutality.” I can’t say exactly what that means, but I can tell Korine seems to think it is is true and that it fits exactly with the tone of the rest of the film. More than once we see several uninterrupted seconds of The Beast thrusting his pelvis while holding his sword and screaming, only for BO to break in with a narrati on telling us how terrifying the beats are.

Image: EDGLRD

BO rolls around South Florida buying sniper rifles, tells the audience to beware of strippers because if you stare into their eyes for too long you’ll lose your soul, and meets other assassins, including Travis Scott’s character Zion, the BO seems to be taking him under his wing. But after each short trip, BO always returns to his home base, where his wife has been waiting for him in bed while she talks offscreen about how much she misses him and wants to have sex with him.

But the fascinating thing about all of this is: AGGRO DR1FT happens to be a more insightful look at the fantasies of an incel than most films that actually attempt to depict the life of an incel.

BO is a bit of a schlub, but he has a cool, sexy job, a cool, sexy wife, and a family that he loves dearly and would do anything to protect. He also sees evil everywhere in a cruel and terrible world. It happens to look like a demon with a mask holding samurai swords. His wife is perfect and needs to be protected, but strippers are evil sirens who exist to steal men’s souls.

All of this performative hypermasculinity feels like it’s been filtered through the lens of a 14-year-old boy screaming during a game on Xbox Live Modern Warfare 2. Evil is something you defeat with a special sniper rifle, and women are there to be protected, not spoken to. The film doesn’t create a coherent ideology, but it’s clear that BO’s worldview is inherently self-righteous and the world of the film revolves around justifying it.

what is so special about that? AGGRO DR1FT is to see all of this presented so brazenly, without the defense of irony or sarcasm to sugarcoat it. Like most of the film, while it’s fascinating to think about, it’s an absolute drag to actually watch.

The most straightforward interesting thing ever AGGRO DR1FTHere’s what it looks like, though: The film was shot entirely with an infrared camera, with changing neon colors that are often inverted, moving the characters from bright, featureless red to bright, featureless blue. He looks unique. These aren’t entirely successful decisions – the film often just looks like an ugly mess of colors. But it’s a style that another, more carefully conceived and directed film could put to good use. The blocky neon blur of the bright colors often used in infrared photography also allows room for the film’s best and most interesting feature: changing illustrations that appear within the colors.

Image: EDGLRD

When a figure or space (e.g. the sky) completely fades into a deep red hue, ink-like illustrations begin to appear within the color, creating demonic heads, intricate machine parts, or presumably any other design. Scott or Korine thought it looked neat. These moments sometimes mean things, like when a giant demon monster shows up while BO commits a particularly bad act of violence that seems to reflect his own self-image. Although these illustrations appear constantly throughout the film, particularly in the second half, they feel criminally undervalued and like a disappointing waste of a great stylistic choice.

Reading all this, it might be tempting to assume that despite its flaws AGGRO DR1FT is at least entertaining or exciting. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not the case. Although the film talks about demons and assassinations, the majority of the film’s nearly 90-minute running time is taken up by characters driving from place to place, standing around awkwardly, or walking around South Florida.

Write a review about AGGRO DR1FT already lets Korine win. It’s definitely unconventional and deliberately provocative. I can’t say the movie really made me mad, but I can say I’m happy to let Harmony Korine win. He deserves it; AGGRO DR1FT is a boring, ridiculous and headache-inducing film. It’s almost impossible to tell whether any moment in the film is just a joke or completely sincere – or so they say AGGRO DR1FT, for God’s sake. It is a meaningless phrase rendered in capital letters, where a 1 represents an I; For all we know, it might as well be Travis Scott’s gamertag. But the film is also more than that. It’s a clear depiction of a certain kind of distinctly male-coded inner life like I’ve never seen before, and there’s value in portraying it in such a strangely unfiltered way. AGGRO DR1FT isn’t an entertaining or particularly well-made film, but it’s the film I’ve been thinking about the most this year. That’s worth something, for better or worse.

AGGRO DR1FT is currently in limited release in cinemas. Participating venues can be found on the film’s website.