★★★
“For Flux’s sake…”
It is too early to start speculating about a girlswithguns.org curse? I mean, we’ve only ever put two banners for movies on our home-page: the first was Catwoman which ended up getting Razzie nominations across the board, and now we have Æon Flux, a film deemed so bad by its studio, they decided not to show it to critics. And given some of the other dreck put out by Paramount this year, with a full promotional push…the results were probably inevitable.
For, y’see, many “proper” critics do not like being deprived of their free screenings with reserved seating, and being made to pay $9 to see the movies with (ugh!) a proper audience. I strongly suspect a significant number phoned in their review without bothering to see see – or, at least, pay attention to – the film, under oh-so-“witty” titles like “Flux Sux”. If the studio basically tells you a movie blows, why argue? [It takes phenomenal guts to go against the tide, but Flux did get some good reviews]
Truth is, of course, it’s not as bad as they’d have you imagine. Not brilliant, sure, but worse films come out, almost any weekend. I’m always happy to see a nicely-detailed take on the shape of things to come, and Flux certainly delivers there, with a Brave New World-like utopia, where everyone is happy…at least on the surface. Of course, if you’re familiar with the excellent Equilibrium, you’ve seen this kind of thing before – but say what you like about the Nazis, they had some great architects, and the same is true here. Particular kudos also to costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor, who deserves an Oscar nomination for her efforts, which have a sleek, futuristic style to them that’s undeniably impressive.
Theron also has the necessary gravitas for the role, and to my ears, even sounded like the character did. She has the tall, spindly appearance too, though the hair is definitely well wide of the mark, and her clothes are – inevitably – toned down from the “fetish wear on amphetamines” depicted in the series. That’s probably a necessity for the PG-13 rating, which also hampers the film in other ways – I’ll say more on that later. But as an adaptation in general, it’s so wide of the mark, you’d be better off ignoring this aspect entirely.
However, it would probably have been foolish to expect otherwise. Given the dense, impenetrable nature of the series, there’s no way a studio was going to spend $60m to make something like that, to open on 2,000+ screens across America. The storyline here is much more linear, logical…and, well, probably less interesting. 400 years after a virus wipes out 99% of the world’s population, Æon is a Monican rebel, fighting the powers-that-be in Bregna, the only city left. However, when her sister is killed by the authorities, it becomes personal, and she takes on a mission to kill Trevor Goodchild (Csokas). However, when she faces him, she finds herself unable to complete her task, and from there she discovers that life is not quite what it seems. Though the revelations are more likely to provoke a shrug than any actual surprise.
The main problem, however, is Karyn Kusama, whose previous work, Girlfight was very good, but was an up-close and personal character study, about as far from the sprawling SF sensibility require here as imaginable. This, I think, summarizes part of the problem with Hollywood and “girls with guns”: they appear to think all action heroines are the same. Hey, you did a film about an inner-city schoolgirl who uses boxing as an escape valve? You’d be perfect to helm an effects-packed, post-apocalyptic, science-fiction movie starring a supermodel gone berserk! No. No. A thousand times no. They should perhaps have gone with producer Gale Anne Hurd, who does at least have an action/SF background, from her work on the Terminator series, Aliens, Hulk, etc. Kusuma seems out of her depth, sad to say.
There is some inspired gadgetry, such as Æon’s little explosive balls, which do tricks on command, and her eye, which can see chemical additives in a glass of water. There is also what is presumably a VR implant, letting her enter the 25th century version of a chat-room to get orders from McDormand. The hair-do on Æon’s boss is from the “through a hedge backwards” school of hairdressing, so it appears that customizable avatars were also wiped out by the pandemic. But like most of the costumes and set design, the futuristic infrastructure is generally well-realised.
The supporting cast come off variably well. Okenodo (left) plays another rebel, with hands in place of her feet, a nice touch that deserved better exploration. “I like my shoes” is Æon’s response when asked why she doesn’t get the same surgery – that’s the kind of perfect, cool, cast-off line the film needs more of. Csokas, and Miller as his ambitious brother who will do anything to keep the status-quo, are solid; but McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite are both badly wasted in throwaway roles, the latter dressed to look embarrassingly like, as one review put it, a Hot Pocket.
Then there’s the action. Save the final battle, which actually reaches the giddy body-count levels beloved of the animated series, they’re poorly-edited – second-unit director Alexander Witt helmed Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which has exactly the same problem. You’ve got a heroine to whom calm, athletic poise is apparently second nature: why not show her for longer than two frames, without cutting somewhere else? Hell, Theron got injured making this – not that you could tell by the time this went through the MTV blender. As a result, the fights pose no threat to the heroine, since you haven’t got a clue what’s going on: your average video-game causes more concern for the participants.
This brings me back to that PG13-rating, which means the violence doesn’t have any edge to it – at one point, Trevor Goodchild takes two bullets to the torso, and it barely slows him down. In the animated series, death was an ever-present occupational hazard for Æon, and the result had a dark, tough feel that is very much missing here. Instead, the tone is indistinguishable from any other heroic SF. The sexual tension is also much reduced – though keep an eye out for Theron’s real-life squeeze, Stuart Townsend, who cameos in the opening scene, passing a message with his tongue to our heroine. That, and Æon trapping a fly with her eyelash, are about the only moments truly recognisable from the series – and, truth be told, largely prove only that some things work better in animation.
That’s a fitting summary for the film as a whole. This is not the disaster you might expect from some reviews (hell, it’s a million times better than what we watched the next night, the woeful and inept National Treasure, which somehow managed to become a smash-hit). However, there’s no denying that this is a disappointing conversion of a classic series. Its failure at the box-office puts the final nail in a very mediocre year for the action heroine at the box-office, that staggered from bad to worse: Elektra. Domino. Æon Flux. Shudder. We’ll move rapidly on, and raise a glass of Christmas cheer, in the hope that our favourite genre finds some better success in 2006. When’s Underworld: Evolution out?
Dir: Karyn Kusama
Stars: Charlise Theron, Marton Csokas, Johnny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo
a.k.a. Aeon Flux
After a decade of “sequels” that weren’t worth the video-tape they were apparently filmed on, Wong Jing finally went back to the well in 2002 for what is, in truth, a surprisingly-tame movie. Given the names of the lead actresses (“Maggie Q”, “Anya”) sounded more like porn starlets than anything, I was expecting loadsa sleazy fun, but they’re model names, and this is probably closer to 
Instead, there’s a laughable scene after an assassination attempt on her by Jill, at the behest of Madam M, who realises she could lose Charlene back to her mother. Jack ends up carrying the wounded parent to the hospital, but keeps stopping to converse with Charlene, which had us screaming, “The hospital! It’s over 
Is it better than Naked Killer? A difficult call, and one that likely depends on your state of mind – as well as whether the word “good” could ever be applied to Killer, a lurid blast that really could come from Hong Kong, and probably only from before the Chinese takeaway of the colony. Weapon is certainly better-crafted and has more crossover appeal: our son was going to pick it up in Blockbuster, till we informed him it was already part of our unwatched pile. On the whole, I think Weapon is the one more likely to be watched again in future – if only because Killer would require the room to be carefully swept for lurking minors and maiden aunts first.
Since the success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, fellow arthouse director Zhang Yimou seems to have become obsessed with one-upping Lee. First was Hero, a sumptuous and multi-levelled tale of revenge and betrayal starring Jet Li; now, we get House which while slightly smaller in scale, is clearly going for the same tragically romantic feel as CTHD. Policeman Leo (Lau) suspects Mei (Zhang), an arrested blind prostitute, is part of the titular rebel group, so sends Jin (Kaneshiro) to win her confidence by helping her ‘escape’, then going with her to the Flying Daggers’s base. However, it gives nothing away to say that Mei and Jin start having feelings for each other, as they battle through the countryside, and it’s no surprise to discover that several other characters aren’t what they seem either.
This dates back to 1986, which is a little odd, as the sport was pretty much in one of its down-turns at the time – the excesses of RollerGames were still a couple of years away at that point. This isn’t probably the best place for a novice to start, as there’s no explanation at all about the sport, since it assumes you know what’s going on, how bouts are staged, scored and what the rules are . There’s a little about the history (including a cute song from the 1940’s), but it’s mostly action featuring the Los Angeles T-Birds.
I went into this with low expectations, based on some scathing reviews and the lack of Ryuhei Kitamura, whose directorial style made the first such a joy. I’m pleased to report then, that this surpassed expectations, with some nice imagination and a bevy of action heroines (including Kuriyama, whom you’ll know as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill, Volume 1), as well as the expected high body-count. It follows on loosely from the original, but heads in a slightly different direction; our heroine is still intent on her mission, but is diverted by a wandering samurai, part of a rogue gang, who reminds her of Nachi, her childhood friend she had to kill at the opening of the original film.
This frothy concoction is light-hearted entertainment, which doesn’t exactly pack much of a wallop, but has some nice characters and situations. Heroine Chun (Kim), is a young cop, galled when her undercover mission is swept away by a rival; she gets another chance, but to her dismay, this involves going back to school to watch the daughter (Nam) of a gang member who has agreed to testify against his boss, but has since vanished. Of course, a hot-tempered cop with martial arts skills fits 
Perhaps I was expecting too much, after reading reviews that 
Camelia (Palmer) sees her way out of the ghetto in Ramiro (Saenz), a friend of her father’s who always has more than enough easy money. She convinces him to employ her as an apprentice, but discovers she likes sharing his life of drug-deals and casual slaughter. But they soon find out, they may not be the only ones capable of a good double-cross…
This is an interesting contrast to Sunland Heat which took a woeful script and executed it briskly enough to work. Here, the story isn’t bad – Anna Rios, a Hispanic lawyer (with a special forces background!) goes back to her roots, after her brother is gunned-down, and uncovers a maze of murky deals. It’s the execution which is largely inept, “Kantz” providing further evidence that one-name directors suck at GWG films – see also Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (McQ), Catwoman (Pitof), Ecks vs. Sever (Kaos) and Tomb Raider 2 (Jandebont).
Chagoyan is perhaps the nearest thing Mexico has to offer to an action heroine. She best known for her role in Lola la Trailera (‘Lola the Trucker’), in which, she played the daughter of a haulier – she takes over his business and goes out for vengeance, after he’s gunned down for refusing to assist a drug-cartel. Almost a decade later, that director’s son would helm this, in which Chagoyan plays a teacher who moonlights as a crime-fighting vigilante. Not having seen part one isn’t much of a problem; presumably it explains her origins, and perhaps how she gets to spend so much time away from her job. All we see here is one class, before she and her midget sidekick take on a gang who kill one of her pupils (with a surprising amount of blood, it has to be said). Then, when she’s blamed for kidnapping the daughter of the police chief, she has to find the real culprits and clear her name.