This evaluation was a part of our protection of the 2023 Sundance Movie Pageant. It was written previous to Jonathan Majors’ arrest and conviction for assault.
The Pitch: Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) desires one factor, and one factor solely: To be remembered. Following within the footsteps of his idols (together with one he writes to recurrently, performed by four-time Mr. Universe Michael O’Hearn), he’s dedicated himself to bodybuilding, shoving down 6,000 energy of rooster breast and pumping iron morning, midday, and night time.
He practices his poses in entrance of cameras, molds his physique to close perfection, rips by means of steroids like they’re Food plan Cokes. He chugs protein shakes whereas watching porn, however doesn’t masturbate — whether or not that’s as a result of steroid-induced impotence or some unspoken sides of his sexuality, we don’t but know. He competes in beginner bodybuilding competitions, however judges at all times discover one muscle group or one other to criticize, which he then assaults with determined, singular vigor.
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Even after we first meet him in Elijah Bynum’s sophomore function (the primary was the Timothee Chalamet-starring Sizzling Summer time Nights), Killian’s already a person on the brink. He’s shy, withdrawn, however liable to violent suits and is already beneath the supervision of a involved therapist (Harriet Sansom Harris). He has no associates, and his grocery retailer coworkers (save for one good woman, performed by Haley Bennett) and clients look proper by means of him. All he has, all he can management, is his physique. And even that’s reaching its limits, which can ship him spiraling down darker and darker paths.
Taking part in within the Majors: Cinematic research in obsession and ambition are nothing new. Save for the bodybuilding angle, there’s rather a lot in Journal Goals that’ll look acquainted to of us who’ve seen every part from Whiplash to Pumping Iron, character research about individuals who commit themselves to a singular aim as a approach of being remembered, regardless of the associated fee in each different space of their lives.
Bynum’s function exists comfortably inside this territory, nevertheless it’s extra all-encompassing than that: Bodybuilding is our entry level, however by means of that lens we’re handled to a research in isolation, radicalization, and the sluggish chipping away of a person’s soul by means of the masculine codes that strip away his help programs. Killian’s room is painted with bodybuilding posters, aspirational portraits of unattainable physique that it’s tough, if not deeply unhealthy, to comprehend. And but, that is exactly what he’s going to do, whilst steroids rip by means of his liver and a lifetime of frustrations flip his mind right into a maladjusted soup.
On high of all that, Killian’s Blackness is tackled head-on, albeit in a approach that makes it really feel like only one extra log added to the funeral pyre of his psyche. The larger (and, because of his ‘roids, the angrier) he will get, the extra his Blackness turns into a legal responsibility. White clients glare at him on the grocery retailer, irate contractors beat him and name him an “ape,” and incidents with the police go as violently as you could possibly think about.
Killian tries to pump his approach by means of all of that ache, resulting in a few of the movie’s most arresting sequences — together with one the place he races to a contest, blood nonetheless streaming from his face after a beating, determined to carry out. As exhausting as his life is, he desires to belong. He desires to be cherished, and desires all his work to be rewarded. As a result of regardless of how good he appears, he merely can’t love himself. Bynum’s strategy to this factor of Killian’s psyche is attention-grabbing, however doesn’t get the identical sense of completion as every part else.
God Assist the Beast In Me: That gulf between actuality and self-perception proves a few of Journal Goals’ only parts, particularly as the remainder of the forged, all in comparatively minor roles, step again to let Majors and his physique do the speaking. Within the opening minutes, The King cinematographer Adam Arkapaw introduces him to us backlit in opposition to amber stage lights, each rippled muscle and drop of sweat on show for our consumption. It’s an deliberately eroticized picture, fetishizing Majors’ Black physique and alluring us to devour it precisely the way in which he desires. However then we determine simply how sad Killian is with it, how a lot he and society at giant scrutinizes it, and it opens up Bynum to take his protagonist on a way more harmful journey within the movie’s barely much less profitable latter half.
As Killian suffers one disappointment after one other — from a disastrous, oversharing date with Bennett’s character to the sexually complicated dynamic that develops between him and his bodily idol — the movie all of a sudden turns in direction of extra violent, Taxi Driver territory, which might be way more attention-grabbing if the movie had the house to discover these parts. Majors handles these adjustments capably, calibrating the identical shark-eyed dedication he takes to weightlifting as he does to creating scenes at diners or fantasizing about punishing those that’ve made him really feel lower than. However he’s doing plenty of the script’s heavy lifting, particularly because the climax builds to one thing as overlong as it’s anticlimactic.
The Verdict: At occasions, Journal Goals feels as juiced and overstuffed as its protagonist, packed to the gills with Issues to Say about bodybuilding, masculinity, loneliness, and Blackness in America, and never fairly having the highway to cope with all of those points in sufficient element. However for all its unrelenting grimness, it’s unattainable to look away from Majors’ unimaginable, titanic efficiency — each downcast look, each nervous grin by means of blood-soaked enamel, each rabid bark of his pissed off outbursts is totally and completely gripping.
The place to Watch: Journal Goals premiered on the 2023 Sundance Movie Pageant. It made its theatrical debut on March twenty first, 2025.
