★★
“Teeters on the edge of complete failure”
There’s nothing wrong, as such, with a film playing its hand close to its chest. However, you’ve got to give the audience enough information to keep them interested, and wanting to find out more. It’s here that this movie fails entirely, doggedly remaining so reluctant to tell you anything, I wanted to strap it down in a chair and start waterboarding. We don’t even get names for anyone involved, it’s that willfully unforthcoming. This begins in the aftermath of a shoot-out at a wind-farm, from which there are apparently only two survivors: a woman (Szep) and her captive (de Francesco). They head across the rural terrain towards a rendezvous with her allies, pursued not only by the captive’s allies, but also other interested parties.
I’ll fill in some of the background, since the movie is painfully averse to doing so. There is a looming, if not already happening, ecological catastrophe, which will result in the loss of all potable water. This may potentially lead to the collapse of civilization, particularly in the more crowded Northern hemisphere. The 1% are aware of the impending situation, and are plotting to head south, taking over resources there for their own benefit – in particular, a large underground water source. This is what the captive was involved in, and what the woman is attempting to prevent. Yet there may also be other, hidden agendas.
The interplay between the two leads is probably the best thing about this, with trust hard to come by on either side. For instance, just before bedding down, he asks her, “What makes you think I won’t slit your throat in the middle of the night?” Her reply, which genuinely made me LOL: “Probably the ketamine I laced your food with,” just as he falls unconscious. It’s a shame their relationship operates in such a vacuum, as far as reasons to care go. Both she and he clearly know what’s happening here: they’re just unwilling to share this data with the audience, and the result is a low-intensity apathy. Which is a bit of a pity, since Szep is decent, a low-rent version of Rhona Mitra, and the pursuing group is led by another unnamed woman (Walker). Say what you like about this dystopian future, at least it’s clearly an equal opportunity one.
The scenery is quite nice, and well-photographed too, though I was a bit confused by the lobbing in of some South African references. I guess it’s all Southern Hemisphere. There’s also a scene where the woman just lets her captive run off, because… Well, like just about everything else here, it goes unexplained. Perhaps the most telling point is, I actually ended up watching this twice, because the first time, I got an hour in and realized I had no real clue what was happening. I blamed this on my having been distracted somehow, so restarted it. Nope. A second viewing proved it was truly a case where it was the movie’s fault, and not mine.
Dir: Michael Hatch
Star: Paris Szep, Vito de Francesco, Alyson Walker, Benjamin Francis Pascoe