City on move leaves characters in the dust
Mortal Engines (out of 4) Starring Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving. Directed by Christian Rivers. 128 minutes. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. PG
You can say one thing about
Mortal Engines: it’s busy. There seems to be a lot of story crammed in a little over two hours in a film based on the book of the same name. As a result, there’s barely a moment’s rest from the film’s relentless pace and plotting. It could be a clever way to paper over the fact that there is almost no character development, the dialogue is stilted and the story itself is rather absurd.
Anyhoo, about 1,000 years has passed since a terrible war has ruined the planet and cities have gone mobile — in this par- ticular case, London has taken a few bits from the old town like the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Big Ben and put the whole thing on tank-like caterpillar tracks, roaming the land gob- bling up more humble, uh, municipalities.
In this post-apocalyptic future, technology consists of what can be salvaged from the past, all of having a sort of a Mad Max or Twelves Monkeys quality about it. At least in the future, there are no cellphones.
Badly scarred Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) gets captured in the latest raid but it serendipitously gives her a chance to kill her nemesis, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), who killed her mother years earlier (backstory provided) in order to get his hands on some old technology that will allow him to build a superweapon.
Sadly, Hester botches the job and ends up in the Outlands with love interest Tom (Robert Sheehan, who looks like a younger Justin Trudeau). They eventually join forces with the good guys, including badass Anna Fang (Jihae) in time for a momentous battle.
Oh, and making her life even more complicated, Hester is being stalked by a relentless cy- borg-like monster called a Shrike for breaking a promise (more back story provided).
A number of secondary characters are jammed into the already bloated narrative but it hardly matters.
Weaving is always fun to watch and gnashes plenty of scenery as the villainous Valentine, but poor Hilmar gets to do plucky and fierce and not much else. Korean rock star/actor Jihae so dominates every scene she’s in, one wishes there were more.
The whole shemozzle is in superbly rendered CGI, so visually it’s a treat. But it is awfully predictable, a film probably best appreciated by younger audiences who haven’t read the book by Philip Reeve (who did not write the screenplay). Others will likely find it a busy, noisy slog.