BEFORE: I recorded this film to go on a DVD with tomorrow's film, maybe I didn't look very closely at it while I dubbed it, because I'm clueless. But it seemed like a political thriller set at the G7 conference, so there's that. There's another film called "G20" on Amazon Prime but my linking system can't get me there, but also there's "Heads of State" and "A House of Dynamite" which are also about global crises and I've got both of those on the docket for January, somewhere in between "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme". I believe in the linking system and sometimes it takes me on these paths with running themes....
Cate Blanchett carries over from "Black Bag".
THE PLOT: The leaders of seven wealthy democracies get lost in the woods while drafting a statement on a global crisis, facing danger as they attempt to find their way out.
AFTER: The poster for this one says it's like "Dr. Strangelove" meets "Night of the Living Dead", but I've got a different opinion. To me, it's more like "London Has Fallen" meets "Save Yourselves!", if that makes any sense. It's a bunch of silly nonsense, really, and it's not put together in a good way, because there's so little information here about what's happening to the world that we the audience are never really sure. The world is supposedly "on fire" while the world leaders are at the G7 conference, but what does that mean? Is it literal or figurative? The emergency in question seems to have some of the characteristics of an alien invasion, zombie apocalypse and/or climate disaster, without being any of those things outright. As a result, the film just did not hold my attention, and I fell asleep halfway through. I woke up, rewound, found where I left off and then promptly fell asleep again. So I had to finish the last 30 minutes of the film in the morning, which is never a good sign.
This seems to be loosedly based on some version of reality at first, I mean the German president is a woman (Schmangela Schmerkel) and the Canadian President is something of a ladies man, prone to affairs - while the U.S. President is just very very old and in his second term, yet he casually mentions that he wants to be President for the next 100 years. Gee, that reminds me of somebody but I can't QUITE figure out who. I'll admit that I have no idea who the president or prime minister of France, Italy, Japan or even the U.K. are right now, so I guess no comment. Wait, Macron, is he still the President of France? OK, that's one more point for me.
But if "Black Bag" was the thinking man's film about international intrigue, this one, by contrast, is rather stupid. The world leaders at the G7 conference start their work drafting a statement about the current international crisis, but you may notice the film never really tells us what that crisis IS. Then night falls and their wait staff and other attendants sort of disappear, and again, no explanation. Their phones suddenly don't work, or perhaps there's nobody left in the world to contact, again, this is quite unclear. The wind blows away the French President's notes and he goes to chase them, returning HOURS later, covered in mud. WTF? Meanwhile there's tension because the Canadian Prime Minister and the U.K. Prime minister had an affair at the last G7 and well, for one of them it was just a fling. So the Canadian guy turns his attention to the German Chancellor, god forbid he go one world summit without getting some action.
There's thick fog in the woods, and some kind of groaning or chanting coming from somewhere. In the first part of the film they hinted at what's to come by showing the excavated bodies of "bog people" who fell into the swamp a thousand years ago, but the swamp somehow preserved their mummified bodies but softened the bones, so they're all floppy. Say, you don't suppose... who had re-animation of the dead on their 2024 bingo card? Things get even weirder when the group finds an enormous brain in the woods and the missing President of the European Commission, who can suddenly speak Swedish and talks about the coming of "Astrid", who is also the Night Queen and will correct (perhaps destroy) the world. Right, it's a lot to take in, plus it doesn't make any sense and then the movie changes course and kind of forgets all about this little narrative path. It's maddening how the film is firing in these different directions without telling us anything about anything.
Well, the group of world leaders somehow manages to get out of the woods and back to the compound, only there's no staff, still no phone service and the world is apparently still on fire. They all get their complimentary swag bags, which thankfully have snacks in them, and they manage to finish the goal of the summit, which is to release a statement on the current world crisis - but it's a collection of different random thoughts pieced together, and in the end it doesn't make any sense at all. Gee, that's just like the film itself. It's notable that whenever the screenwriters don't need a character any more, that character commits suicide. Very sloppy work, somebody just didn't know what to do with their own creations, and suicide is the easy way out, so to speak.
I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm currently headed straight (OK, not straight) for "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme". Better days and better movies lie ahead, hopefully.
Directed by Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin
Also starring Roy Dupuis, Denis Menochet (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Charles Dance (last seen in "The First Omen"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "Here"), Rolando Rovello, Takehiro Hira (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Alicia Vikander (last seen in "Son of a Gun"), Zlatko Buric (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Tomi Kosynus, Ralph Berkin (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Alexa Kennedy,
RATING: 3 out of 10 aluminum blankets
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