Or put another way, Indie Cult Comedy in a corporate entertainment hell about a cross-country road trip in order to enter a child in a junior beauty pageant, the former Vice President of the USA in a art house cinema about the kind of world we’ll be passing on to the next generation or Hollywood thriller in local desolate cinema where there is no future generation.
We go with the latter and sigh about the state of our neighbourhood when we find the car park playing host to the maddest bit of hand-break turn joy riding I’ve ever seen. The security guard is more sanguine however, as he watches on, drawing casually on a cigarette. He thinks the manager may have called the police he tells us. Either way only the first ten minutes of the film are accompanied by the background sound of screeching rubber and.
As it turns out, it’s a pretty good film albeit with some significant flaws.
The future is well portrayed, with enough references to the current to make it feel realistic, avoiding the common pitfall of having everyone flying around in hover jets or suchlike.
This is a world devoid of children, where the youngest person on earth is now 18 and no one knows exactly what has caused the global infertility (though no doubt PD James would have suspected it would be connected in some way with move away from the Book of Common Prayer).
And on the plus side, there’ll be a good decade free of joy-riding hoodies around the corner I guess, but I digress…
Thrillers rarely engage me to the point of caring (though I’d give most things a try for Clive Owen), but I’m genuinely tense hoping the car jump-starts or the door opens in time etc.
Generally people beating each other up on celluloid holds no enjoyment for me and if I’m watching on DVD I’ll actively hit fast-forward. However, when Marichka comes into her own and starts whacking the shite out of someone, I’m cheering inside.
That said there are problems. A crying baby in that circumstance could I’ll acceot stun a handful of soldiers into a stupor, but an entire company? Also one running gun battle is shot with blood splatter across the lens. However, all this achieves is to make me suddenly very aware of the camera and operator and in turn, my disbelief is harder to suspend.
Other plot holes annoy a little (just happened to find what you needed in the mist – how fortunate!) and the film is 30 seconds too long, with the possible highly ambiguous finish sacrificed for a far more resolved option culminating in a brutal cut to titles.
All in all though, a pretty good film; better than I expected.
1 comment:
ok liz, we're bored now. tiem for a new blog entry? hmmm, now what have you been doing these last few days i wonder......? :)
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