Joaquin Phoenix Battles Pedro Pascal in Full Trailer for Ari Aster’s Eddington

Reteaming with Joaquin Phoenix after the divisive, impressively anxiety-inducing Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster is back with his fourth feature. His western Eddington, which world-premiered in competition at Cannes, stars Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, and Amélie Hoeferle. Ahead of a July 18 release, A24 has now dropped the full trailer.

Here’s the brief synopsis: “In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.”

Rory O’Connor said in his Cannes review, “Eddington is nothing if not ambitious, a period piece for an era that is still just four iPhones ago, and one that prods issues most wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poll. Richard Nixon was only two years resigned when All the President’s Men was released, but the majority of Americans had by then agreed it was probably the correct course of action. Set in the heady summer of 2020, events that the world is far from coming to terms with, Eddington is picking at an open wound. This makes the director’s choice to focus his film on Cross––an anti-masker who decides to run against the popular Garcia for mayor––a provocative one, if also misjudged. The character’s thinly sketched beliefs (combined with Phoenix’s uncharacteristically vague performance) keep him constantly at arm’s reach. We never really get into his head, which makes his eventual downfall (or Falling Down) feel both nihilistic and dramatically undercharged. (That pretty much the only characters who act in good faith are a Black cop, Michael [Michael Ward], and the members of the neighboring Pueblo community perhaps says something about the limits of Aster’s satirical nous.)”

See the trailer below.