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Leave it to the guy who began the public theatrical rollout of his movie in strip clubs – yes, you read that correctly – to have an equally iconoclastic streaming debut. Harmony Korine, long an enfant terrible of American independent film, has once again delivered a work at the bleeding edge of cinema with AGGRO DR1FT. But just because a project is significant and groundbreaking does not always mean it is good.
AGGRO DR1FT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The “what” of AGGRO DR1FT is quite easy to describe. There’s not much of a conventional plot in Korine’s film, and not only because the film runs a cool 80 minutes in duration. Bo (Jordi Mollà) is a moody Miami assassin who begins to rue the monotony and morality of his chosen profession. He’s given the assignment to end all assignments: taking out a major local kingpin, a winged menace who holds women in giant birdcages, at great risk to himself.
But it’s the “how” of AGGRO DR1FT that really marks the reason to watch. Korine and cinematographer Arnaud Potier shot the film entirely with infrared cameras. This renders the film’s action in distinctive greens, purples, oranges, and blues that feel more at home on a weather radar than a movie screen. With the help of AI and other animation technology, the film takes on an entirely different dimension than simply relegating itself to the events occurring on screen.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: With its searingly bright colors, woozy editing rhythms, and overall Floridian feel, AGGRO DR1FT most immediately recalls Korine’s cult classic Spring Breakers. Some of the graphic design rendered in the post-production animation process also has the expressionistic vibe of the Spider-Verse series. But overall, the film resembles a video game in all its vitality and validity.
Performance Worth Watching: This is not a movie one watches for the acting (sorry to Travis Scott), as will be explained below when describing the dialogue, so shout out to whichever of the strippers had to pull off the stunt of gyrating appealingly while clutching a live firecracker between her legs. You are a true soldier for the cinema, madame.
Memorable Dialogue: Korine has described that AI was used to help create the visual stamp of the film. I’m not sure it wasn’t also used to generate the film’s dialogue, which is nothing more than a parade of self-aggrandizing smack talk. If it was sourced directly from 10-year-olds playing Xbox Live, it wouldn’t be surprising. Only toward the end of the film does Bo finally start dropping lines with even the slightest hint of profundity like “The weapon is an extension of the hitman’s soul.”
Sex and Skin: While there is plenty of stripping in AGGRO DR1FT, both for a private audience and in public at a club, the film does not contain any actual sex or nudity. (Some of the latter element may be just masked by the film’s animation and coloring.)
Our Take: “I was trying not to make a movie,” Korine said of his intentions in making AGGRO DR1FT. This makes the project especially difficult to assess – it requires an entirely different axis of analysis.
On the one hand: so many frames of AGGRO DR1FT are bursting with imagination and innovation. The infrared photography combined with creative animation gives Korine the ability to peer beyond a character’s outer appearance in an exhilarating fashion. His visualization of what lies inside of people beyond their flesh and bones ought to dispel notions that his interest stops at a sleek surface.
But AGGRO DR1FT is more of a road map to cinema’s future than an ultimate destination. Even at 80 minutes, it feels much longer because Korine lets the film stew in its juices as it runs in elliptical circles around the same ideas and events. Superimpositions and fades help some to make the inertia feel naturally inspired. Yet these bells and whistles cannot entirely hide that this project plays like a proof-of-concept piece drawn out unnecessarily to feature length. It’s somehow bold and a bit of a bore.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Someone will undoubtedly grab the torch from Korine, or perhaps he will carry it on himself. But something interesting is happening in AGGRO DR1FT that is neither the future nor a fatal death blow to cinema … yet. I’m not ready to say how or where the techniques pioneered by Korine here will end. But as we await the fulfillment or fizzling of these techniques, anyone invested in cinematic form ought to tune in here out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. Someone may do this better, but Korine can always say he did it first.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
