Unhelpful

28 Days Later…

This may rank up there with The Dish in terms of breaking away from traditional movie making. 28 Days Later is a purely British film, the storyline for which doesn’t appear to have been abused by Hollywood at all.

The setting is something Hollywood has already done -catastrophic viruses and zombies, but like Heinlein and Asimov, the focus is not on the technical aspect of how it happened, but how people react to it, and survive in that world. The story is very human,and does a fair job of representing how various types of people would react to such an event.

Its only weakness is the denouement: it does leave itself open for sequelizing, with multiple ways to start one. The alternate ending, although much more depressing than the official one, at least offers more of a sense of a tidy clean-up.

Overall rating: 4.5 Popes out of a possible 5. Normally I’d dock a full Pope for the open ending, but the rest of the movie is just that good.

It’s a pity that this didn’t get released until after “The Matrix” as it addresses the same sort of world, but from a slightly different, and just as interesting perspective: what is reality?

The world of this movie takes the idea of computer-generated reality and extends it into multiple layers, a concept that some people are afraid The Matrix will end up doing to cheese out of some of its issues.

The story stands out in the same way that I’ve been discussing lately: the “science” part of the story is glossed over - there’s no explanation as to how people “connect” to the virtual world, you just do. The screen time is spent showing how the characters explore the worlds they are thrust into, be that voluntarily, involuntarily, and through layers of complexity one might not expect.

Overall rating: 4 Popes out of a possible 5. Could very possibly have been stronger if it didn’t have to compete against the Wachoski brothers’ creation.

This was a relatively low-budget movie that came off extremely well. The most obvious-to-me influences were “The Matrix”, “THX-1138“, and “Fahrenheit 451“. The director’s commentary track on the DVD acknowledges all of those influences as well as several others.

THX-1138: All of the characters in Equilibrium live their livesout in a drugged state, the intent being to remove the “bad” emotions so no one ever feels depressed or angry. The side effect is that there are no good emotions either, which echos reality far too close, but that’s a different rant altogether.

Fahrenheit 451: All forms of artistic expression are destroyed:books, normal art, music, and so on. While this is the intent of this movie, it breaks down slightly because there is some form of artistic expression in virtually everything, including the appearance of a building or automobile design. Even the absence of design is a form of expression itself, anyone who has visited my domicile can vouch for that. The director does address that particular issue, but his justification doesn’t really satisfy me. I’ll accept though that the world of the movie has a subjective scale: art that is clearly intended to be evocative of emotion is banned, while lesser expression is tolerated.

The Matrix: One word, action. The director clearly didn’t have the budge for Bullet Time, or lots of wire stunts, but heat least pulled off the martial-arts beat downs. The action is slightly weakened the way it’s implemented: all gun, little traditional hand-to-hand combat. It could have been better if there was more movement in the “gun katas”. Even in small-circle jujitsu, the man in the middle is far more active in movement and evasion than the movie’s style. All of that being said, that’s merely the setting. I’ve written nothing above to spoil the plot. Go rent it.

Overall rating: 4 Popes out of a possible 5. There is a major unanswered question for me: is the entire world like that, or is it just that city or region. Certain expository scenes were unnecessary, and the martial-arts action could have been better. I suspect this will be a target of of the next incarnation of the Mystery Science Theater 3000.