Aeon Flux Review
by Martin Phipps (martinphipps2 AT yahoo DOT com)August 29th, 2006
Word of mouth, including from people who actually saw it, has been pretty bad for Aeon Flux. Apparently the studio felt the same way because they didn't screen it for critics. I, myself, only recently saw it on video.
Charlize Theron stars as Aeon Flux. Set in the year 2415, 400 years after a virus had wiped out 99% of the human population, Aeon Flux is a member of the Monicans, an elite group of assassins who intend to kill the rulers of Bregna, the last city on Earth, presumably under the assumption that all you have to do is remove the dictator in charge and you'll instantly have a democracy. This sounds like a scheme George W. Bush might have thought of. Some reviewers have ironically refered to the Monicans as "manikans" in the sense that the acting is wooden. It's possible that the director, Karyn Kusama, is actually in on the joke because the Monicans, especially the Handler played by Francis McDormand, never crack a smile. By contrast, the supposed villains, the Goodchilds, played by Marton Csokas and Jonny Lee Miller seem genuinely happy and chummy in the scenes where they are first introduced. As a viewer, I felt confused, realising that the villains had so far come across as more sympathetic than the heroes. Fortunately, his was a good confusion in the sense that it foreshadowed the fact that things were not as they seemed.
Just as in this year's Ultraviolet, the hero comes to realize that those she is working for may be no more rightious than those she's been hired to kill. Yet while Ultraviolet solves this dilemma by killing everyone, both foes and former friends alike, Aeon Flux takes the time to ponder the situation and ask herself whose side she is on and who the bad guys really are. As a result, the movie has been criticized for being slow and introspective. Where have we come as a society where we criticize our heroes for not immediately killing everybody who appears on screen?
The solution, while satisfying science fiction, does leave some unanswered questions. How exactly did the Goodchilds remain in power for 400 years without being overthrown? One would imagine that they must have been genuinely well liked because it wasn't *that* difficult for Aeon Flux to get past their defenses. And how is it that after 400 years the big secret that the Goodchilds were protecting never got out into the open? I can just imagine people saying "Wow, Trevor, you look just like your father. And his father. And his father. Etc. Etc. Etc." Otherwise the big revelation made a lot of sense and explained everything quite nicely, as long as you are willing to suspend your disbelief to the point of accepting the idea of genetic memory.
Of course, the movie had to end with a big explosion. For a moment there it looked as though Aeon Flux ws going to cause an explosion big enough to kill everybody in Bregna and, thus, doom the human race to extinction. Somebody needed to tell her that no sufficiently advanced technology (short of a world ending bomb) should be considered evil or unnecessary and that Trevor was right in telling Aeon Flux not to make that choice for evreryone else. No. That's what he did. Or his great great great (x5) grandfather anyway.
Martin Phipps
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
