Film Review – Elvis (2022)

There’s always a moment before watching a Baz Luhrmann film where one forgets one is about to watch a Baz Luhrmann film. And then it begins, and some sort of insanity is immediately established, promising a cinematic ride for viewers that’s engineered to leave them breathless. This feeling of being overwhelmed struggled to survive in the helmer’s last endeavor, 2013’s “The Great Gatsby,” but Lurhmann is back to his old mischievous ways with operatic excess in “Elvis,” which isn’t a bio-pic of the legendary singer, but more of a comic book-style extravaganza about the icon and his extended struggle with his manager, Col. Tom Parker. “Elvis” is a lot, which is just the way Lurhmann likes it, blasting the screen with extraordinary visuals, acting, and pure energy, trying to replicate Elvis’s whirlwind life and his confusion when dealing with the business elements of his extraordinary career. It’s a 159-minute-long picture, and Lurhmann uses his run time to generate a hurricane of emotion and information, attempting to treat the story of Elvis Presley as a pop tragedy with a side of sensorial assault. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com