According To The variety How 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, son of the legendary “Z” director and political critic Costa-Gavras, the count now stands at three. First, there was his 2010 debut, “Our Day Will Come,” an unnerving call-to-action in which redheads inherit the earth, followed by the white-knuckle “Athena,” about an uprising in a Paris apartment bloc. Now comes the splashy “Sacrifice,” which takes a more satirical view of ecoterrorism and the end of days. “Sacrifice” feels like the music-video director’s reaction to Ruben Östlund’s 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’Or trophies for his films “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square.” There’s a similar look and feel to Gavras’ sleek contemporary critique, though it’s a hard formula to match, requiring a masterly control of both tension and humor that Gavras struggles to achieve.
After opening with a violent cult ritual intended to put us on edge, “Sacrifice” 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) realizes at the last minute that his gas-guzzling entrance isn’t such a great look, so he asks the driver to pull over and walks the last few steps … for the earth’s sake.
Dressed in white, Mike is no hero, but he’s played his share of them on the big screen. That was before his recent mental breakdown — which culminated in a flamethrower incident his agent (Sam Richardson) does his best not to mention (the way Tom Cruise’s people no doubt steer clear of his couch-jumping gaffe). Mike’s hardly the first celebrity to question whether he might serve some higher purpose. The problem is, he doesn’t stand for anything and seems to be openly searching for a cause of some kind. Perhaps that’s what brings him to this tony charity gala, hosted by wealthy industrialist Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel) and his wife Gloria (Salma Hayek Pinault).
The event takes place at the Volakas marble quarry, a spectacular location, with its temple-like façade 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’s larger halls, it’s hard not to think of the performance-art scene in Östlund’s “The Square,” in which a man playing a gorilla wound up attacking the guests. In Gavras’ version, it’s guerrillas we have to worry about, as a gang of ecological warriors led by Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) infiltrate the gathering.
The 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’s solution to ransacking the earth’s 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 “Mother Nature.” When two dozen blond kids rush in with guns, it takes the crowd a moment to realize this isn’t part of the show.
That 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’s not clear why it should be any worse than previous ones. So Joan and company have taken it upon themselves to intercede. They’ve 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.)
According to Joan (the radicalized child of a brilliant scientist, played by John Malkovich), her followers must choose a King, a partner — or “True Love” — for her brother (Jonatan “Yung Lean” 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’t seem nearly unstable enough. If ever there was a role for Shia LaBeouf, this is it.
Moments 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’s not so sure where he stands. As in Yorgos Lanthimos’ semi-similar, equally far-fetched “Bugonia,” a movie like “Sacrifice” 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.
There’s a virtuosity to Gavras’ filmmaking, which yields some surprising laughs and thrills along the way. But there’s no world in which this volcano would obliterate all life, and no scientist who would corroborate Malkovich’s explanation that a chemical in some people’s blood can solidify molten lava — which makes whatever happens a leap of faith. Of all Gavras’ cine-revolutions, this one is both most familiar and the farthest removed from our reality.
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