Aeon Flux Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)December 9th, 2005
AEON FLUX
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
"I had a family once," Aeon Flux explains to us in the film's heavy, ponderous and ever-present voice-over. "I had a life. Now, all I have is a mission." Groan.
AEON FLUX plays like an overcooked concoction of every science fiction film ever made. Like a pot left on the stove too long, all of its favor and life has long since evaporated.
Although it has a good pedigree, directed by Karyn Kusama (whose only other picture was GIRLFIGHT) and written by Phil Hay (CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL), the movie is one in which it is painfully easy to see why the studio did not permit it to be screened in advance to critics. Clearly, the studio wasn't worried that the critics would hate it. They were, quite correctly, concerned that the pundits would be terminally bored by it. Neither cheesy fun nor laughably bad, it is just lifelessly dull. It is a movie which fails to ever rise even to the guilty pleasure level or to engender any emotion whatsoever from its audience.
Charlize Theron, who has two modes, sexy beautiful (THE ITALIAN JOB) or trailer-trash ugly (MONSTER), wears plenty of alluring outfits while delivering a performance worthy of a Fifth Avenue mannequin. In the title role, she is a superhero out to save what's left of the world in the year 2415.
It seems that a virus wiped out 99% of the population in 2011, leaving most of mankind to live in a walled city run by a fascist government that is secretly kidnapping its people. Aeon, and her sidekick who has four hands but no feet, are rebel fighters called something like "modicans." The entire story is as baffling as it is uninteresting, but the actors in it take themselves so seriously that they appear to think they're performing a long lost Shakespearean play.
AEON FLUX, if it has a place in the firmament of the cinematic heavens, would be as something to be played on TV in the wee hours of the morning. Then its real purpose can be appreciated, as it could serve quite effectively as a sleep aid.
AEON FLUX runs way too long at 1:35. It is rated PG-13 for "sequences of violence and sexual content" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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