Aeon Flux

Aeon Flux (Director: Karyn Kusama)





















Kusama directed Girlfight. Based on the MTV Liquid Television series created by Peter Chung, this adaptation comes courtesy of partners Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay (crazy/beautiful, The Tuxedo)

I never watched the series. In fact, I mark the days when Liquid Television began as the first days of "must-avoid" MTV. There were some gems here and there, for sure, but MTV was certainly going in another direction from what the "M" stands for. But many times, when I clicked past MTV, I would see a part of "Aeon Flux" and watch for a couple of seconds, and wonder, "Do other people actually watch that?" No one had ever expressed to me a love of the show, or has since, so I was surprised that a movie starring Charlize Theron was coming out, a decade after the show began and ended.

This is yet another "people being contained within a perimeter" movie, after this year's The Island and Land of the Dead have already told their stories on the subject, and we can also mix a little Matrix and Heavy Metal for good measure. In this, the government is keeping people within a huge glass dome after a disease has been conquered and contained, and no one knows why. Loved ones are mysteriously disappearing. So a rogue group called the Monicans have sent Aeon (Theron) to go assassinate the leader of a group of scientists (I guess, science is government in this world) named Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas). During the attempt, Trevor and Aeon recognize each other, he calls her "Catherine," and both wonder if they knew each other once. It is also apparent that Trevor is not the bad guy and that Aeon is being set up. The real bad guy is his brother Oren (Jonny Lee Miller). Let the chase begin.

My problem with this movie stems from a lack of imagination. There are some ideas here that could have used some fleshing out--like, for instance, the mythology. One thing about great sci-fi is that there's a different world, with different rules, with an intriguing backstory behind it (think Star Wars, think The Matrix). Aeon gets us to a new world and doesn't really want to show us anything. It's more just a straightforward shoot-em-and-bang-em-up. There are those crazy little exploding balls you've seen a million times in the trailers--get a good look; you'll never see them again. And Frances McDormand (reuniting with Theron here after North Country) plays a shady rebel leader who can only be talked to through some sort of pill and ESP or something--man, would have loved to have known more about that. But who has time when there's people to kill?

TESTING: Let's see if I can get this Technorati tag thing to work.