Rosalind Eleazar in Misty Green. Photograph: Merrick Morton/A24/AP View image in fullscreen Rosalind Eleazar in Misty Green. Photograph: Merrick Morton/A24/AP First look review Toronto film festival 2026 Review Misty Green review – Chris Rock’s jumbled LA drama saved by fiery Rosalind Eleazar Toronto film festival: There’s a stunning lead performance from the breakout British actor but the film surrounding her can’t quite match what she’s bringing
Benjamin Lee in Toronto Sun 13 Sep 2026 05.30 CEST Last modified on Sun 13 Sep 2026 05.33 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google T here’s a mighty, all-guns-blazing performance at the centre of Chris Rock ’s cynical Hollywood-set spiral Misty Green, a spark of fire almost put out by the relative dampness of the film surrounding. British actor Rosalind Eleazar, best known for her work in Slow Horses , has probably vaulted herself into a strangely underpopulated best actress race with her turn as a struggling actor trying to grapple her way back to the middle. Eleazar does enough here to go much higher.
Misty has an Emmy for her role on still beloved TV series Red Eye but it sits on the shelf of an apartment paid for by a married, and recently deceased, benefactor, right next to the empty liquor bottles and a rolled-up bill used for last night’s cocaine. The film throws us into her final week there, as a brittle, short-tempered widow (Amy Landecker) gives her seven days to find somewhere else to live, not easy in a city like LA and even harder when she’s unable to find work. Her lack of employment is both a result of an industry that doesn’t have a place for someone like her (she’s “too black to be with Leo, not black enough to be with Damson, not a nepo baby and not a Brit”) and also her difficult temperament, stuck in a “one-sided beef with Shonda” and choosing wild, drug-fuelled nights over bright-eyed morning auditions.
The week sees all sides of her life crashing together as bipolar brother (a welcome return for Daniel Kaluuya even if he’s given very little of note to do) returns after a stint at an institution, sleazy fuck buddy ( Adam Driver , believably seedy) offers her a well-paid yet morally questionable gig in Dubai, closest friend ( Anna Kendrick ) wrestles with her new life as a faithful future-wife rather than struggling actor after a surprise pregnancy and a chance encounter with a director she once fell out with (Rock himself) leads her to a potentially life-changing career opportunity.
It’s Rock’s first film as writer-director since 2014’s similarly industry-based and similarly so-so Top Five and it feels as if in that time away, even though he’s not exactly been absent, he’s insisted upon himself a need to comment on everything that’s happened since. So the film often feels like an overcooked mix of a standup routine (Rock’s character has a funny bit on why all civil rights movie suck), a diatribe against a still-racist industry (Misty is auditioning for a comically awful role that sees her talking like a character in My Pafology ) and a more serious look at both America’s poorly handled mental health crisis and its grim state of race relations (a subplot follows the media covering the death of a white woman, allegedly, at the hands of a Black man). It’s a plate stacked precariously high and the more we can feel Rock trying to point out what he wants to say the further it takes us away from the plight of Misty herself.
For a film centered on, and named after, a female c…