Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Movie Review: Aeon Flux

Sigh. Another day, another dystopian future where strangely dispassionate but perfect soldiers plan the overthrow of a repressive government. Nobody seems to have much emotion here (and not a drop of Librium in sight), even as they talk about possibly destroying the last of the human race. Action scenes here are largely boring - lines of black-clad riot police and Our Heroes spraying automatic weapons around randomly, and the Bad Guys fall down. The main Bad-Guy-Turned-Good-Guy gets shot in the back twice during the last half-hour and still manages to commando his way around without much problem. Hand-to-hand combat scenes are primarily filmed in confuse-o-vision - herky-jerky cameras, too tightly shot, and poorly edited.

The plotting isn't any better. The security employed by the Bad Guys is laughable - you have a cloning operation essential to the continuation of both your government and society, and you put it in an orbiting blimp that can be reached by jumping off of a building, where it can be destroyed by a couple of bombs? Oh, O.K. There are a total of five-million people in one city, they have access to every one of them in the womb, and the government can't put tracker devices or something in each one. I see. The lead character calls off an assassination attempt on the leader because she suddenly has a repressed memory of them being together - and this memory didn't appear during the thousands of other times his image was seen (his face is on murals all over the city)? Yeah, sure.

This is just an attempt at style over substance, and there's not much of either. Two stars.

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