The actor and Transformers star Shia LaBeouf is no stranger to controversy. Over the past decade the 38-year-old has become known as much for his arrests for disorderly conduct and public intoxication as his intense screen performances. In December 2020 he was sued by the singer-songwriter FKA Twigs, an ex-girlfriend, for sexual battery, assault and the infliction of emotional distress (he has denied the allegations; the much delayed trial is set for September).
None of this, however, can quite prepare you for the Shia LaBeouf featured in the behind-the-scenes documentary and buzzy Cannes Film Festival entry Slauson Rec. In the movie, shot over three years and culled from hundreds of hours of footage, LaBeouf is captured in the process of assembling an avant-garde theater company in Los Angeles. He emerges during that time as a thermonuclear rage machine, someone who is as brittle and thin-skinned as he is aggressive and insensitive, and who instinctively and mercilessly abuses his collaborators, peppering them with expletives.
