Friday, November 14, 2008

The Mutant Chronicles = Pile of Shit!

The Mutant Chronicles was one of those movies I heard about, saw the trailer and thought "Hey that might be good" [I guess I do that a lot], and even though it has the plot of a Sci-Fi channel TV-Movie you hold out hope that despite it's hokiness-- it may work...

...it doesn't.

This movie is utter garbage and I hope you don't have the misfortune of seeing it. To that end, my review will be laced with spoilers revealing characters, plot points and the ending. You have been warned.

Loosely based on the original Swedish pen & paper tabletop RPG The Mutant Chronicles; the movie is set in 2707 where 4 megacorporations have literally taken over the world and naturally they are all at war. The destructive conflict breaks a seal covering a 700 year old evil machine thingy that turns the dead into zombified mutants. They kill people and bring them to the machine which turns them into more mutants and the process repeats exponentially. Six weeks later the last survivors on Earth are escaping to Mars in Steam-Powered spacecraft (I'm not kidding!) and Brother Samuel, leader of an ancient monastic order asks for men to go on a suicide mission to destroy the machine.

Thomas Jane is an underrated actor, but the shit he was given here wasn't his fault. His two most memorable lines in the movie were "I'm not paid to have faith, I'm paid to fuck things up" and the imaginative "Gimme the fuckin' bomb." John Malkovich shamefully collects a cheque for playing Constantine, one of the Earth leaders completely ineffectually and Ron Pearlman has dropped in my estimation for an awful rendition of the Ar n'Athair (the Our Father prayer in Irish) but there is one dim acting light in the form of the excellent Sean Pertwee who had a noble role and I think gave this his all, sadly it was just too little.

The most annoying aspects of this movie was the way not one, not two, not three... but as many as six characters make a "Noble Sacrifice" with their lives (Jesus! Even one of them did it twice) so as not to slow down the mission or to make sure it continued. I also loved the way water underneath an orbit-reaching rocket ship didn't boil when it took off. Also it appears a victim of the zombie-mutants can be dragged along the ground without food and water for six weeks and survive. But the most annoying thing is near the end your hunch about the movie making a better video game all through watching it was justified when you realise that you've actually played it!!! It's QUAKE 4, seriously near the end-- it becomes Quake 4!

The only redeeming quality of this trash is it's production design, which was phenomenal, from the extraordinary array of costumes to the weapons, vehicles and architecture. A pity it's all wasted in such garbage.

Final Verdict: The Mutant Chronicles is a hopeless waste of money and talent that would have been better served making something else... ...chocolate sauce perhaps.

Colonel Creedon Rating: *

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And you wanted to go to it colonel ...you wanted to go !!!!
( At least I had a good reason for going (Colossal name drop incoming) having Promised Thomas Jane at Comicon I'd go ( no I'm not joking and the Colonel does have proof) But I'm afraid everything the Col has said is true but far, far worse! He forgot to mention the Dogfight sequence between two steam powered spaceships where on one ship someone forgot to close the Furnace doors just so Hot coals could fall out to burn the crew...or about John Malkovichs apparent attempt to impersonate a pissed off nightclub doorman at 3 a.m "DO YOU EVEN HAVE A NAME?!"
I believe the quality of the writing and film can be summed up by the newspaper poster that says "Enemies join up to fight new enemy!" or the fact that the aincent book of prophecy written 3 thousand years ago happens to have a map of the ruins of 21st Century london? and its actually on the map as Ruined City???? Sigh Awful , truly awful , i just can't believe you were so generous to give it one star Colonel

Anonymous said...

The review plus the comment only makes me more interested in seeing it!

I miss MST3K. It's like you always had your friends there to help you make fun of terrible movies.