MUTANT CHRONICLES
(Review)

“The Chronicles foretell of the release of the enemy, the ruin of the world, the final days of our age. But, they also prophesy the survival of Man. That Nakhdan the Deliverer, shall walk reborn among us, and deliver us from destruction.
“It is in the service of that prophecy that we are now irrevocably bound.”

Following an introductory sequence that establishes the nature of the film’s threat (an apparently alien machine which first landed here at the end of the Ice Age), we are quickly thrust into the middle of Simon Hunter’s Mutant Chronicles:
The year, 2707; the earth is ruled by four corporations—Capitol, Bauhaus, Mishima, and Imperial—massive entities who wage an endless war over what little natural resources are left on the planet.
But something is about to awaken that ancient, extraterrestrial machine, and only in the face of this all-consuming threat, will mankind unite, in a desperate bid to save the planet, and the entire human race.


The set piece that kicks off Mutant Chronicles—a border skirmish between Capitol and Bauhaus—effectively mires the audience, along with the suffering soldiers, in the brutal conflict that holds the world in a death grip.
Utilizing a grungy steampunk milieu for this particular future, Hunter (working off a script by Philip Eisner, who also wrote Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon) presents this section of the global conflict as World War I trench warfare revisited.
The explosions, the screams, the lethal gas, it’s all here, depicting war in a horribly intimate and visceral light.
There is nothing of today’s video game warfare here, with smart weapons launched remotely from locations insulated and far removed from the battlefield. Instead, this is the brutal combat of the early 20th century, where the blood, the sweat, and the dirt, are all too real.
But this mayhem pales in comparison to the bloodshed which ensues once the alien machine is set in motion, and implacable, inhuman hordes are loosed upon the already ravaged world.


Enter the squad of military personnel—which includes The Mist’s Thomas Jane, Sin City’s Devon Aoki, and Speed Racer’s Benno Fürmann—and the suicide mission that is quickly cobbled together by Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), who represents the Order of Nakhdan, and is guided by the writings in the sacred Chronicles, an ancient tome protected by the silent Guardian, Severian (Perlman’s co-star in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Anna Walton).
It’s in the hands of this tiny band that the final hope of the human race lies.


What is perhaps the most commendable trait of Mutant Chronicles is, it’s the sort of film that valiantly works around its budgetary limitations.
What we have here is an ambitious genre production that dares to tell a sweeping, wartorn tale of faith in the face of adversity, on a far humbler budget than your average Hollywood tentpole.
There’s quite a lot of green screen, CGI, and other assorted effects work here that, yes, look rather dodgy, but they’re in service to a narrative that boasts subtext, however fleeting, which is more than can be said for any number of big budget Hollywood monstrosities.


At its core, Mutant Chronicles is about how faith can thrive in even the most bitter and desperate circumstances, and that all will turn out right in the end, though perhaps not the way we may anticipate.
Given another pass at the script, a more dynamic action coordinator, and a Hollywood-sized budget, Mutant Chronicles could have stood a chance of turning out to be a genre classic.
As it is, despite its flaws and shortcomings, it’s still nonetheless an interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile watch.


Parting shot: It’s too bad that we see too little of Sean Pertwee and Shauna Macdonald, and John Malkovich’s role here is all but a blip on the film’s running time.

Parting shot 2: The film is loosely based on the Mutant Chronicles RPG originally published in 1993.

(Images courtesy of omelete.com.br [Mutant Chronicles OS and film images] and aintitcool.com [Mutant Chronicles quad].)

THE TUDORS Episode 1 (Review)

Opening with the brutal assassination of a British ambassador (Sean Pertwee, seen recently in Wilderness; review in Archive: April 2007), Showtime’s latest offering, the ten-episode The Tudors, is one of those modern re-tellings of history which can turn a subject usually perceived as dead boring into a matter of interest by making the players identifiable as real men and women. Not unlike you and me, except they don’t have cell phones, and we don’t have crowns.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers (the scheming twat in Woody Allen’s Match Point; and one of Tom Cruise’s lackies in Mission: Impossible III) plays King Henry VIII in his days before all the fat just snuck up on him. His Henry is a young monarch hungry for sex, a male heir, and immortality.
He addresses the first hunger by sleeping with everyone except his wife, Catherine of Aragon (Maria Doyle Kennedy), and by doing so, ends up marrying five more times, sating the second (so history tells). The rest of this episode serves to appease the third craving, as Henry spoils for a fight with France, responsible for the death of the ambassador, who happens to have been Henry’s uncle.
But the scheming Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill, perhaps most widely seen in the first and third Jurassic Park films) has other things on his mind…

The first impression The Tudors makes is that it looks authentic: the costumes, the suits of armor, the foppish tennis clothes. The show looks the part.
That, then, is supported by an able cast that brings Henry VIII’s court to life, a court which includes young loyalist Charles Brandon (Henry Cavill, who was one of the chosen few on McG’s Superman shortlist before Bryan Singer came on board and handed the cape and tights to Brandon Routh; Cavill’s also in the upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust)*, who’s just randy for Anna (Anna Brewster), and Lord Buckingham (Steven Waddington), who’s hungry himself, for the throne, which is actually his by blood, and who also happens to be Anna‘s father, none too happy with Brandon shtooping his daughter.

So the first episode is pretty much a set-up for all the conflicts and machinations that will, presumably, be the stuff of the nine subsequent episodes, and the dominoes are arranged with determined ease and skill.
For all its prettiness though, and the confidence with which the story is being told, there seems to be a certain something that’s lacking, some vital spark that is needed to achieve that alchemy that all great narratives possess.
Or perhaps it’s simply that this is the first episode, where some introductions are decidedly brief: among them, Thomas Tallis (a court composer and organist, played by Joe van Moyland) and Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer of Casanova). Tallis, I have no idea what role he played in Henry’s court, and Anne…
Anne, after all, is the woman who’s gonna get Henry into all sorts of trouble, and all we see of her in the first episode is the quickest glimpse (and a convenient intro from her da, should we happen to have missed his last name in a previous scene).

The Tudors is written by Michael Hirst, who also wrote Shekhar Kapur‘s Elizabeth, which got Cate Blanchett an Oscar nom that she really should have won (sorry, Gwynie, but Blanchett just truly kicked a$$ in that one). Apparently, Hirst has got a thing for the house of Tudor, as he’s also written the sequel to Elizabeth, this year’s The Golden Age, with Blanchett returning. (Oscar, take note.)
Perhaps I’m not entirely enchanted by The Tudors since I wasn’t entirely enchanted by Elizabeth either. Blanchett rocked, no doubt (she nearly always does, actually), but Elizabeth was the sort of film that you watched—and recommended—primarily for the performance.**
The Tudors though, does not have a central performance with the power of Blanchett’s Elizabeth. Rhys Meyers is good, but he’s no Blanchett, at least, not in the first episode. So it all falls down to the court intrigue and the politicking, and if the ensemble can keep things interesting.
I’m willing to take on the second episode and see how things develop. If I like what I see enough, maybe I’ll see this all the way through.

* Interestingly enough, Cavill was also in the running for Batman in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, as well as being the other actor considered for Casino Royale’s James Bond. Director Martin Campbell ultimately passed on Cavill since the then-22-year-old was considered too young for the role, which of course, eventually went to Daniel Craig. That’s three pop culture icons Cavill came this close to portraying.

** I am still entirely convinced that the nomination Elizabeth got for Best Picture was delivered on the coat tails of John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, which made Oscar ga-ga over all things Elizabethan that year.

WILDERNESS (Review)

Survival horror has a new contender in Wilderness, a nasty little number directed by Michael J. Bassett (who also helmed the World War I-set Deathwatch).

Racing along at a fast clip right out of the gate, Wilderness takes some ten minutes or so to set up Callum (Toby Kebbell), the New Kid on the (Cell)Block at Moorgates Young Offenders, where some prison bullying leads to a bunch of inmates being sent off to “The Wilderness,” an isolated, supposedly uninhabited island where the prison system’s worst offenders can be sent for “character building” and “rehabilitation.”
Shepherded by Warden Jed Wyler (Sean Pertwee, from Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers), the lads soon find that they aren’t alone on the island. Among the unexpected guests, are Louise Dow (Alex Reid, from Neil Marshall’s The Descent; a little Marshall lovefest going on, eh?), of Temple Park women’s facility, with some young charges of her own.
Of course, there are other, more unwelcome guests, some of whom have brought highly trained and vicious attack dogs for a spot of fun.

There’s a fair amount of blood and gore in this production, but all that grue is firmly supported by a script by Dario Poloni that doesn’t stop for a breather, and excellent performances from the young British thesps (among them Lenora Crichlow from TV’s brilliant Sugar Rush) who play this rag tag bunch of sociopaths and sex offenders, who are also, by the way, the protagonists we’re asked to sympathize and identify with.
It’s to the credit of these actors and the script, that we actually do (well, identify with some of them, at least).

Wilderness is the sort of brutal tale where the descent into savagery is all too quick and easy; the kind of film that shows you how flimsy the mask of civilized man really is.
Look alive, this one’s got some teeth on it. And a couple of cracking the-sodding-maniac-was-in-the-bloody-frame-the-whole-time! shots that are guaranteed whoppers.