Review: With 'Elvis,' director Baz Luhrmann finds a subject worthy of his rhinestone-studded vision

If ever a biographical movie’s subject matched its director, the life of Elvis Presley — marked with gaudy excess, musical epiphanies and buckets of rhinestones — and the carnival-like filmmaking style of Australian director Baz Luhrmann seem like an inevitable pairing.

Sure enough, the movie “Elvis” — a cradle-to-grave chronicle of the king of rock ’n’ roll’s 42 years on Earth — is much like Luhrmann’s most successful movies, “Moulin Rouge!” and “Romeo + Juliet.” It’s big and bold and brassy. It’s not perfect, and at 2 hours and 39 minutes still doesn’t deliver everything you’d expect in a telling of Elvis’s life story. But it’s always holding your attention.

The narrator of this tale could be considered the villain of the piece: Col. Tom Parker, the sideshow promoter and con man who heard a skinny white kid from Tupelo, Mississippi, and saw the dollar signs. Parker is played by Tom Hanks, who digs deep into the portrayal, with old-age makeup, a distinctive walk, and an accent of unclear origin (though, as the story unfolds, that accent makes sense). Hanks revels in the role, as he gives us a lot to take in — as most everyone and everything else here does in Luhrmann’s detail-heavy dive into Elvis’s eventful life.

Luhrmann starts with a boy Elvis (Chaydon Jay), lured by the blues music of the Tupelo gin joints, and by the gospel music of the revival tent. The movie doesn’t shy from those influences, and how Elvis’s respect for them was more homage than appropriation. In these passages, much credit goes to bluesman Gary Clark Jr. (as Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup) and the singer Yola (as Sister Rosetta Thorpe), bringing this generation’s voices to tackle the classics.

From his teen years to his death in 1977, Elvis is played by Austin Butler, and damn if the man doesn’t capture that compelling mix of small-town innocence and animal ferocity that made Presley a star. In an early scene, when Elvis first takes the stage and his gyrations start making the young women in the audience get hot and bothered, you can feel how Luhrmann has captured that sensual electricity that made him a sensation.

It also got him in trouble, with prudish officials (embodied by the segregationist Sen. James O. Eastland, played by Nicholas Bell) wanting him banned from the airwaves or arrested. Parker, fearful his meal ticket is about to be torn up, convinces Elvis to leave his parents, Gladys (Helen Thomson) and Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), to enlist in the Army. He’s stationed in Germany, where he meets an American girl: Priscilla Beaulieu (played by Olivia DeJonge), who would become his wife. (The movie omits that when they met, she was 14 and he was 24.)

Back in the States, Parker’s influence again held sway, and the “new” Elvis was a performer in a series of bad movies, his face and name emblazoned on all manner of merchandise. (Parker licensed “I Love Elvis” pins, and also licensed “I Hate Elvis” pins — on the theory that somebody would do it, and he might as well make money on it.) As the industry that had moved on to the Beatles and Bob Dylan, Elvis wanted to speak out about civil rights and other issues, particularly after the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. But Parker keeps his eyes on the money, telling Elvis that King’s death “has nothing to do with us.”

In 1968, in what might be the movie’s signature sequence, Elvis recorded his landmark comeback TV special for NBC. (Nice detail: The hallways in the studio are filled with posters from another NBC show, “Star Trek.”) What Luhrmann and his co-screenwriters depict is a secret revolt, by Elvis and TV producers Steve Binder (Dacre Montgomery) and Tom Diskin (Leon Ford), against Parker’s plans for a cheesy Christmas special. Once the show became a hit, Parker claimed it was his idea.

The movie’s third act delivers Vegas Elvis, as the star was yoked to a long-term contract to the International Hotel — a deal brokered to pay off Parker’s gambling debts, the movie tells us. The movie gives us glimpses of Elvis’s declining health and his substance abuse, but gives equal attention to his work backstage creating the most entertaining show Las Vegas ever saw.

Luhrmann keeps Elvis’s story moving at a rapid pace, and layers it with a ton of music — both Elvis’s classic songs (performed well by Butler, or deploying the King’s original cuts) and updated remixes that use hip-hop, dance and other genres. The sonic assault serves as a reminder that Elvis formed the baseline for so much of the last 60-plus years of music, without forgetting that Elvis himself built his career on other people’s sounds.

Through all of the flourishes — which Presley, I think, would have appreciated — Luhrmann deftly captures the tension between Elvis and Col. Parker, the artistry that grew out of it, and the price Elvis paid for his fame. “Elvis” does something we haven’t seen since 1977: It makes the King feel alive again.

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‘Elvis’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking. Running time: 159 minutes.