| RATING: | 40% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
A very technically-accomplished movie that starts badly, gets better and then proceeds to go nowhere interesting with its bizarre-but-emotionally-realistic premise. A politically-correct apartheid allegory that hints at the problems of a transition to democracy in South Africa, but which both lacks a story and is also somewhat nonsensical. How, for example, are technologically-superior aliens able to be oppressed by the human race with its inferior weaponry?
The problem with films like this is that they want to be clever political parables about White supremacy while still indulging in violent thrills and spills. And you cannot really have both unless you are very talented. Instead, the politics of the movie comes across as inane and lifeless - as though simply positing White guilt, but not exploring it, were enough to establish ones esthetic (& political) credentials.
In common with other movies made by Whites, Whites are shown as the only one's capable of saving marginalized minorities. This salvation message is accentuated by the fact that a White messiah, even with handicaps, is more capable than all the to-be-saved peoples combined. The lead character is painfully-incompetent and clueless - yet somehow able to partly-subvert genetic supremacism. There are few nods to self-determination because of the implicit belief that the oppressed are incapable of it; meaning that the oppression was, somehow, ultimately excusable and the White Man’s Burden still remains the unsolicited and alleged saving of Others - as it was under apartheid.
The other problem with the movie is technical: The alleged documentary feel of the movie is only that - a feel. At no point do we sense - as in the War Game - that this really is a documentary, since the events are so fantastical. Moreover, this movie is dramaturgically unimaginative and thematically unoriginal while its attempt to appear like a documentary soon wears thin since no documentary would be shot as this is filmed. This film has so little confidence in its own premise that it desperately wants you to believe the unbelievable.
Like the movies of Quentin Tarantino, this film simply collates features from better movies: ET, The Fly, Iron Man, The Defiant Ones, et al, to conceal a story that makes little sense and lacks adequate characterization to make us care. Better than Alien Nation, certainly - but not much.
No comments:
Post a Comment