Aeon Flux

Posted by Greg

February 28, 2008

All Fluxed Up and No Place to Go
** out of *****

Begun as a series of anime-inspired shorts that aired on MTV in 1991 (and a subsequent regular series and graphic novel), Aeon Flux was a violent, sexual, kinetically charged series that pushed all kinds of boundaries and gained quite a large cult following. Unfortunately, the film adaptation is a busy, schizophrenic film that suffers from a messy script, bad directing and little resemblance to the source material. In a trend that’s all-too common of late, they went and pulled the Hollywood magic trick of turning an R into a PG. Butt-in-seat numbers go up, quality goes down and I’m left sitting in my chair wondering when they’re going to ignore the stupid kids and get back to making bad-ass sci-fi/action movies for adults.

In 2011, a plague wipes out 99% of the world’s population. The remaining survivors build themselves a walled city called Bregna, protected from the outside world that, according to the powers that be, is a dangerous and unfamiliar place that’s been reclaimed by nature. For four hundred years, the city has been controlled by the Goodchild dynasty, heirs of Trevor Goodchild, the man who developed the vaccine that saved the last sliver of the human race from extinction. But there are problems. People have strange dreams and memories of things that never happened. Disappearances are common and conspiracies abound, which has led to the formation of a rebellion, who call themselves the Monicans.

Their top agent is Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), who is dispatched to assassinate the current Goodchild leader, also named Trevor (Marton Csokas). Sneaking into his fortress at night (wearing a skintight white leotard, for some reason), she comes face to face with him and, due to an unexpected ‘feeling,’ hesitates, leading to her capture. Of course she escapes and stumbles onto a cover-up that causes her to rethink her mission and alliances. Running and explosions ensue.

The biggest problem with Aeon Flux is the script, which lacks punch and weaves all over the place like a drunk driver on the Autobahn. It’s a shame, because the stories for the original cartoon were so wildly inventive and ‘out there.’ The main structure is there, as are character names and a few wispy plot elements from the series, but that’s about it. The dialogue isn’t terrible or anything, but it’s full of so many inconsistencies and plot holes that it soon becomes distracting. Characters appear out of nowhere just when they’re needed in the most random of places, assassins walk in and out of heavily guarded compounds at will, Batman-size leaps in logic are made… it’s all very tiring. When the dirty secret behind the cover-up is revealed, my brain started whirring with ‘but if… then why…’ scenarios, which are too numerous to count. “If that’s true, then why doesn’t he do this?” “If he did that, why can’t he just do this?” Pretty soon I had to force myself to stop thinking and watch the rest of the movie.

Director Karyn Kusama (who’s only credits on imdb.com are director of Girlfight and an office manager for Lone Star) showed talent with her previous film but I don’t think she’s up to the task of taking on a major studio movie. The fights are poorly covered and suffer from distracting, overblown sound effects (similar to Tom Yum Goong), the action scenes are anemic and there is a real lack of logic to many of them. When one character jumps off of an aircraft that’s 50 feet in the air and traveling at about 100 MPH, they hit the ground as if they had just tripped on a poodle. Perplexing.

Beyond that though, the movie does have some saving graces. The special effects are well done for the most part and the design of Bregna City is impressive. Theron resembles the character of Aeon as closely as any human can, I guess (although her wardrobe here isn’t as S & M as it was in the cartoon), and does a nice job in the lead. Csokas is a talented actor but here plays his part with a surprising lack of authority for a guy at the head of a dynasty that’s ruled for 400 years. Other characters that are supposed to play a major part - Oren Goodchild (Johnny Lee Miller), Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) and even Pete Postlethwaite (in a bizarre role) - are underwritten and uninteresting.

Bottom line - an action movie without much action based on a violent, sexy cartoon that jettisoned the violence and sex - I had to wonder… what’s the point?

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