This movie happened to be on Netflix and the single-sentence summary (usually those manage to tell you nearly nothing about a given movie/show) seemed interesting. Plus it starred Christian Bale, who's an at least somewhat famous actor. So I thought I'd give it a shot.
It turned out to be a movie that I liked, even almost a little better than I expected. It didn't have a ton of depth, but it was interesting enough and slick-looking. Cool aesthetics. Visually, the aesthetic of the movie I would describe as "industrial minimalist semi-grunge, with slight neoclassical tones." That may be a description that only makes sense to me.
It's a dystopian/sci-fi movie. The settings/architecture were sort of a minimalist industrial look -- vaguely Brutalist in some ways/places, but not all of it was fully Brutalist. Visually it was an interesting-looking movie.
The premise, as described by Netflix: "In a dystopian future, a totalitarian regime maintains peace by subduing the population with a drug, and displays of emotion are punishable by death." This is actually one of the better/more descriptive Netflix descriptions and is basically accurate.
The movie seemed a bit like a mishmash of two classic dystopian/science fiction novels, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Also with a helping of Star Wars on the side. So it was a bit derivative, but it was a perfectly decent movie. There was even a touch of A Clockwork Orange (perhaps coincidental) with some music by lovely lovely Ludwig Van having a part in one scene.
I don't remember if I've seen anything else with Christian Bale in it. I think he's known for playing Batman? Or something like that. [American Psycho, The Machinist, both of which I should watch, The Prestige, also Batman like I suspected] In this movie he reminded me of an assortment of other actors, including Jake Gyllenhaal (think Nightcrawler), Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream), and Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC Sherlock, etc), among others.
There were a number of artful fight scenes in this movie, consisting of an interesting theatrical combination of martial arts and gun battles. There was one scene involving something somewhat fencing-esque. I do wonder how much the actor(s) (namely Christian Bale) had to train/rehearse/practice the choreography for these fight scenes.
It wasn't a particularly mind-blowingly profound movie or anything, and most likely not Christian Bale's most acclaimed work, but again, it was perfectly decent, visually striking/interesting and the premise about living in a society where people are unable to have emotions was interesting enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment