Sci Fi Sunday: Aeon Flux
This comes across like Logan’s Run meets Barbarella without the intelligence of the former or the kinky tongue-in-cheek humour of the latter. Charlize Theron, wearing a skin-tight outfit and having a very bad hair day, plays Aeon Flux. Miss Flux is part assassin, part freedom fighter but, as we all know, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist and the rulers of the last city on earth are looking to bring her and her freedom fighter/terrorist buddies down.
You’d think that after 99% of the world’s population died mankind would be struggling for survival, even 400 years into the future but you’d be wrong. The last city looks utopian, with only the fact that some of the residents are mysteriously disappearing putting a downer on things.
This is the kind of SF movie that gives the genre a bad name. Full of what the makers doubtless thought were clever ideas (my favourite being the killer garden) this is silly, unoriginal with even the action scenes feeling stale. Why Karyn Kusama got the directing gig on this after only helming one previous film, Girlfight (2000) is anyone’s guess.
Theron looks like she knows she’s in a turkey while Frances McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite phone in their performances (probably from the bank). Everyone’s got bills to pay I guess.
