Published: December 7, 2005
“Aeon Flux” takes place in a post-apocalyptic futureworld where people have mutant limbs, mysterious dreams and kicky, asymmetrical haircuts.
It’s a good-looking movie with a fine cast, including four Oscars nominees: Pete Postlethwaite, Frances McDormand, Sophie Okonedo and, in the title role, Charlize Theron. She’s fine, but the problems in “Aeon Flux” – which is chilly and humorless – start with Aeon.
She’s the only unambiguously good character in the movie, a superwoman bent on saving the world and avenging her sister’s murder, but we don’t care much about her. The film has lots of violence, but there aren’t any consequences – it’s like a video game, where the worst thing that could happen is you have to start over.
This is especially noticeable in the shootouts, where hundreds of years of high technology still haven’t resulted in a weapon that can take down any of the good guys. In a bizarrely misconceived scene, Aeon is in a room full of people whose mortal wounds are her fault and, as they gasp for breath, she ignores them to tend to a cut on her hand.
There are signs this could have been more involving. The movie ignores its unique love story, involving the concept of cloning, and an intriguing argument about the morality of cloning (“We’re SUPPOSED to die,” says Aeon) also doesn’t get explored.
I suspect that, at one point, this brief film dealt with those themes in more depth, and that’s why the cast signed on. But those themes have been eliminated to give the fanboys plenty of girl-on-girl martial action and to leave the actors wondering, as Aeon says at one point, “Why am I here?”
(c) 2005, St. Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.).
