SACRIFICE (2025) B-
(director/writer: Romain Gavras; screenwriter: Will Arbery; cinematographer: Matias Boucard; editor: Benjamin Weill; music: Gener8ion; cast: Chris Evans (Mike Tyler), Vincent Cassel (Ben Bracken), Salma Hayek Pinault (Gloria Bracken), John Malkovich (Gunnar), “Yung Lean” Leandoer (Arthur), Anya Taylor-Joy (Joan), Ambika Mod (Katie, Daughter Nature), Charli XCX (Mother Nature), Jade Croot (Joan’s sister Louise), Sam Richardson (Oliver); Runtime: 113; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Robert Walak, Jacob Perlin, Romain Gavras, Gregory Jankilevitsch, Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska, Giorgos Karnavas; Film4; 2025-UK/Greece/USA-in English)
“Provocative satire and thriller.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Greek-French music video director turned filmmaker Romain Gavras (“Athena”/”The World is Yours”), son of “Z” director Costas-Gavras, in his English-language debut, gets off to a good start with his curious set-up for his provocative satire and thriller taking a mischievous swipe at the super-rich and at celebrity activists for being phonies. But the ambitious pic, though thought-provoking, sputters and is too dull and not funny enough to hold-up through-out.
Gavras co-writes it with playwright Will Arbery. They get their inspiration from the Eat the Rich films by Ruben Ostlund.
The hard luck and vain movie star, more worried about losing his hair than in saving the environment, Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), nevertheless wants to change his image after an embarrassing public rant to the press on the red carpet that went viral at the premiere of his latest film. He therefore pretends to care about ‘saving the planet’ and accepts an invite to attend an A-list climate change conference in a remote Greek island, at the Volakas marble quarry-near an active volcano.
At the conference, the smug and hypercritical industrialist billionaire, hosting the charity affair, Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel), tells of his unscrupulous plan to mine the ocean bottom and save it by ironically wrecking it so he can make a great profit. His pop star wife Gloria (Salma Hayek Pinault) shows off that her latest album is designed ecologically favorable.
The young terrorist from a doomsday cult called “Green Isis, believing the world will soon end because of a prophecy from a volcano, Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), invades the event with her adult siblings and an army taking all the guests hostage by gunpoint.
At this point the film becomes weird, inane, messy and opaque, as it loses its grip on reality.
It leaves us with the terrorists believing in order to save the world they must sacrifice in a ritual three celebs, chosen by crowd approval from an applause meter. They are Mike Tyler-the hero, Ben Bracken-one of the wealthiest men on the planet (a Bezos clone) and Katie’s character of Daughter Nature-a performer played by Ambika Mod). They are thrown into an erupting prophetic volcano near the event site.
John Malkovich appears in the third act as Joan’s father, a brilliant but deranged scientist. Charli XCX plays a cringe-worthy performance dancer called Mother Nature.
The cartoonish targets are too easy to ridicule. But the film was stylish and nice to look at, it had a few funny bits, and seriously asks us what we’re willing to give up to get meaningful climate change (a question we should be asking ourselves).
It played at the Toronto Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 10/27/2025 GRADE: B-
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