Mutant Chronicles (2008)
Mutant Chronicles
Directed By: Simon Hunter
Cast: Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Devon Aoki, Sean Pertwee, John Malkovich
Reviewed By: Ken Mooney
Rating: Four-Out-Of-Five Bananas
To say Mutant Chronicles has slipped under the radar would be an understatement: for a sci-fi/horror film with liberal amounts of violence, blood, guts and gore, the film has received little advertising or press coverage.
Which is surprising, because it’s a hell of a lot of fun!
Based on a role-playing game of the same name, Mutant Chronicles takes place in 2707, where four mega-corporations run the earth and are constantly at war with each other over natural resources. During one such battle, Major Mitch Hunter (Jane) is present when a stray shell breaks a stone seal, unleashing ‘the machine’ that had fallen to earth centuries before, an automated weapon that horribly mutates its victims. As the mutants spread, the planet is slowly evacuated, although only some can be saved. Brother Samuel (Perlman) is the keeper of the Mutant Chronicles, an ancient tome that may guide him to the machine and its destruction, but first he assembles a small team to accompany him there, ultimately a suicide mission that may prove to be the planet’s only hope.
Mixing religion with war, sci-fi and a post-industrial future is a tricky business that may or may not work: Mutant Chronicles falls somewhere in between the two, to be honest. The whole thing is a little bit cheesy, and really looks and feels like it should be limited to a cheap straight-to-DVD feature (or even worse, a Sci-Fi Channel movie!) but Perlman and Jane can, in this reviewer’s opinion, do very little wrong. Jane is probably better-known from his title role in The Punisher a few years back, and the similarities between that and Mutant Chronicles are clear: dodgy plot, dodgy acting, but cool, kick-ass fight scenes. Of course, Mutant Chronicles wins the comparison-battle by virtue of its massive armoury (swords, grenades, guns and weird bone claws) and the fact that its bad guys are cool zombie-type mutants (though they don’t look as scary as John Travolta, they’re what Paul W.S. Anderson really should have had in the Resident Evil movies.) It helps that the fight scenes don’t shy away from (very comic-style) graphic violence with blood galore.
With such awesome fight scenes, how could the film go wrong? Well, to be honest, there’s a few too many scenes involving talking (the cheek!) in which the actors are well aware that they’re hamming it up, although that doesn’t save them from the ham. And then there’s the production values…though high for the fight scenes (namely because of some swift camera work and all that delicious blood), the world of 2707 is mostly created by use of ‘digital lot’ effects, that are very obviously fake and otherworldly when dwelt on for any length of time, with some scenes obviously consisting of the cast standing on a sound stage. It’s also not your standard future, relying on retro influences than the future, and the opening scene in particular (save for some small details) would easily fit into any WWII film. Of course, the politics of the film means that this makes perfect sense, but this really isn’t one of those films you want to think too much about.
Give it another couple of years, and Jane should become the next generation’s Chuck Norris (Thomas Jane doesn’t hunt the mutants: they queue up in an orderly line to get killed by him.) And that’s all Mutant Chronicles is: mindless fun, but one hell of a ride getting there. If we can forgive Chuck Norris for that (and Starship Troopers. And a billion and three other 80’s ‘classics’) then Mutant Chronicles should go down as another classic.
Verdict:
Think of it as a 300 set in the future that looks a bit like the past. Better yet, just watch it and don’t do any thinking at all. (That said, the third and fourth bananas come with a disclaimer that you know what you’re letting yourself in for!)
Originally published on FrankTheMonkey.com