BEFORE: Christian Bale carries over from "The Promise" and I cut one other film with Christian Bale, "The Pale Blue Eye", that's been re-scheduled for May because it's going to serve as a vital link right after Mother's Day. I'm so glad I checked that before watching it.
THE PLOT: In an oppressive future where all forms of feeling are illegal, a man in charge of enforcing the law rises to overthrow the system and state.
AFTER: Well, I think you can see what was on somebody's mind in the year 2002, or more likely in 2001 when the film was written or developed - the 9/11 attacks had probably just taken place, and some writer thought maybe that would lead us into World War III - just guessing here though. The film is set in 2072, so the premise is that the survivors of World War III would have to rebuild society, and so they set out to make things better by identifying the cause of war - human emotions - and getting rid of them. There, that should do it, all fixed. No more wars. It's not like people ever started a war over land or ethnic diversity or religion or drilling rights, so yeah, outlawing feelings just could be the answer we've overlooked all this time.
In addition to being a very simplistic way of attacking this ages-old problem, just how, exactly, is this going to work? By creating a chemical, Prozium II that suppresses all human feelings, sure, but how is it going to WORK? Answer, it can't, not physically or logically. Right off the bat, near the start of the film, characters are being congratulated of taking their meds and not having any feels, but then right THERE, they're PROUD of sticking to the program, and isn't pride a form of emotion, or at least a feeling? Surely they must feel a sense of accomplishment for sticking with the program, but isn't THAT a feeling? Really, it should go something like this - "Hey Cleric Preston, good job suppressing your emotions, way to go!" followed by "Thanks, but I really don't care." See, that's just not going to work. Even if you could suppress love and hate and the big emotions, how are you going to get through the day without gratitude, a feeling of accomplishment, some pride in your job or some kind of motivation to even get out of bed? THOSE. ARE. FEELINGS.
It's notable that the lead character's wife was executed a few years back for being a "sense offender", and he doesn't even seem to care. (I'd say "good job!" but that would be inappropriate...). John Preston has to raise a son and daughter on his own, and still he's got a busy day full of confiscating artwork, burning books and making sure nobody else has any emotions, either. This is a bit like if you took "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and "THX 1138" and cross-bred them with "Blade Runner". The government is all-powerful, bans ALL the books to be on the safe side, and then wants to turn everyone into, essentially, drugged human replicants. And then there's a very Matrix-y type of combat called, I swear, "Gun-kata". That might be the most ridiculous thing, imagine martial arts between two people holding guns, which seems like overkill, but they bang the guns together instead of their hands, and all the stances are based on different positions one uses while aiming a gun. Umm, why? Next thing you know, they'll invent a katana that also shoots bullets or a bazooka with a built-in MP3 player.
There's no "Big Brother" here in this "1984"-like society, but instead the head government official is named "Father", and I see what you did there. But is he real, or just an image on the screen? At some point they must have invented deep-fakes, because nobody's really sure. Or maybe he died years ago and all the speeches are reruns - and Smedley Butler is really in charge.
Things go bad when Preston realizes that his partner stole a book of poetry from the last raid, and he realizes he might be reading on the side. Burning the Mona Lisa is fine (and oddly, this is the second film this year to feature that) but reading Yeats can only lead to bad, naughty things. And that means his partner isn't really taking his anti-emotion meds, so he's forced to take him out. And his new partner is super-ambitious, he can also sense when other people are having feelings (but isn't THAT itself a feeling?) so when Preston accidentally breaks a vial of his Prozium and the line at the drugstore to get more is WAY too long, you can kind of see where this is going. Soon it will be Preston having all the feels, and his partner's going to have to turn HIM in. When they encounter an illegal dog-breeding operation, Preston can't bring himself to allow a cute puppy to be exterminated, and his fate is sealed.
We're supposed to believe, however, that Preston's emotions are slowly resurfacing, but they cast the dark, brooding Christian Bale as Preston, so unfortunately the audience never gets to see the transition. Maybe the character is doing a great job of hiding his emotions, or the actor is unable to subtly express them, it's tough to say. He's so good at suppression that his boss charges him with finding the traitor Cleric who's been meeting with the leader of the Underground, when, ironically, Preston himself is the traitor. Or maybe his boss knew this all along, and was setting a trap for him, again, tough to say. He has the bright idea of turning in his partner as the traitor, which would have been great if his partner hadn't thought of turning him in first.
GUN-KATA SHOWDOWN!
Also starring Emily Watson (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Taye Diggs (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Angus Macfadyen (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Sean Bean (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Matthew Harbour, William Fichtner (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Sean Pertwee, David Hemmings (last seen in "Camelot"), Emily Siewert, Alexa Summer, Maria Pia Calzone, Dominic Purcell, Brian Conley, Christian Kahrmann, John Keogh (last seen in "Spencer"), David Barrash, Dirk Martens, Anatole Taubman (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Klaus Schindler, Kurt Wimmer with archive footage of Saddam Hussein, Josef Stalin (last seen in "The Good German").
RATING: 3 out of 10 broken mirrors
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