‘Untold: The Liver King’ Review – A Hilarious Charade, Both Intentionally and Unintentionally

Brian Johnson, aka The Liver King, is a fascinating subject for Netflix’s Untold because he’s at once both a ridiculous charlatan and an indescribably compelling character. Existing somewhere at the intersection between influencer culture, toxic masculinity, anti-woke propaganda, and outright garden-variety psychopathy, this is a guy who can only exist, let alone be successful, because the mechanisms of our failing society have allowed him to. But I still think he’s pretty funny, so maybe I’m the problem.

If you asked the Liver King, the problems are with modernity in general. His whole shtick promotes the nine tenets of “ancestral living”, which include fun activities like sleeping on the floor, never wearing shoes or a shirt, and eating the organs and genitalia of wild animals. The contradictions are baked into the very firmament of the gimmick, unless we’re supposing that our ancestors pulled trucks with chains and then uploaded the footage to Instagram.

The movie’s director, Joe Pearlman, obviously gets this, and structures the entire lean 70-minute runtime around making fun of it. The most ludicrous aspects of Liver King’s lifestyle are always framed in such a way that the audience’s attention is pulled to them; the lampstands styled after AK-47s, the throne in the kitchen, the shelves full of supplements that he sells to customers with the help of a marketing agency, like any self-respecting caveman would. At no point is the implication ever “this guy’s cool.” It’s always the opposite. At one point, Brian recalls how the absence of his father caused him to idolize steroidal ‘80s movie stars, and claims that Rambo: First Blood reminded him of himself, entirely without irony.

Liver King is a character whose remarkable financial success and pervasive virality overwhelmed the real guy underneath. And thus, the character became the man. The act became the life. Only someone who truly believes the nonsense he’s peddling would ever enthusiastically boast about reaching orgasm in the middle of a bench press set. It’s one of several unbelievably demented moments, of which Liver King seems to have an inexhaustible supply. The film-makers clearly viewed him with the same kind of relish as his marketing team; as an endless bounty of quotes, viral shorts, and nutcase theatrics.

Not that Liver King ever truly bought into the character 100%, since the documentary eventually shifts to the scandal that ensued when it was conclusively proved he had been injecting a steroid cocktail worth $11,000 a month, about which Brian had lied to seemingly everyone he had ever met, with the exception of his doting and similarly bonkers wife, the so-called Liver Queen. Despite the fact it was obvious you can’t look like Liver King at 45 years of age without chemical assistance and ab implants, it was nonetheless detrimental to the brand, which insistently revolved around the claim that doing press-ups and eating testicles was enough to get impossibly jacked.

Brian Johnson in Untold: The Liver King | Image via Netflix

Here, Untold: The Liver King takes a darker turn. Brian confesses not only to the steroids but to a lifetime of grifting that implies every aspect of his lifestyle, way beyond the stuff he openly admitted to having lied about, is purely fiction designed to hoodwink people into lining his pockets. On this level, the movie is closer to Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever than it is to, say, Untold: Shooting Guards. Also, has nobody else noticed the extreme coincidence that the two most prolific grifters of our time are named Bryan Johnson and Brian Johnson?

What’s a shame is how the trajectory of the feature implies some rather sad things about Liver King’s family, who seem to be trapped in this ridiculous cosplay routine indefinitely. The kids, Rad and Stryker, both of whom have nicknames I’d blush even to reproduce, don’t look especially healthy to me. But more to the point, it likely isn’t a coincidence that they receive regular visits from child protection services, which at one point Brian downplays like it’s no big deal. This comes immediately after leading his sons on a charge to take down a bull and consume its quivering raw organs on camera, which nobody present seems especially comfortable with. Pearlman is always careful to catch the little smirks and askance looks that the brothers sometimes exchange when Liver King starts talking to the dead bull or asking them scientifically incorrect questions that they never know the answers to. Would an Xbox really be that bad?

The movie leaves Liver King a changed man, though perhaps “born again” would be too grandiose a term (this is, nonetheless, the one he uses.) In the cold, honest light of steroid scandal and waning interest in his nonsense, Brian bravely admits that he was wrong about “almost everything”. With a promise that what he has shared in this film has been, like, 99% true, he briefly outlines his new business venture – turning his ranch into a fresh produce store for primals like him who have started eating fruit now.

And long may he reign.