“Won’t Even Be Entertaining in An Aeon”

Based on the MTV animated short films of the same name, Aeon Flux takes place in the distant future (the 25th century to be precise), where a domed city protects the remnant of humanity from a rapidly-evolving jungle which is reclaiming the earth. This surviving colony of humans erected the city-state to stave off the encroaching threat and provide an egalitarian existence for its denizens—the survivors of a bio-engineered virus that ravaged earth’s entire population in 2011.

Enter Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), model citizen of Bregna by day, butt-kicking Monican (rebel) by night. Aeon’s sister, Una Flux (who came up with these names?) is executed for her suspected ties to the Monicans and Aeon accepts a mission to murder council leader, Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas), and thereby exact revenge for her sister’s death.

After a series of martial arts fights, Aeon finally confronts Trevor: Trevor proves his veracity to Aeon and they immediately jump into bed together. Viewing the tryst on a spy camera, Trevor’s brother, Oren (Jonny Lee Miller), stages a coup and instructs all security forces to shoot Trevor on sight. When Aeon reveals her recent, recurring nightmares, Trevor explains that the two of them were married in another life and were cloned, along with the rest of humanity, centuries ago (infertility was an unfortunate side-effect of the virus’ cure). Trevor had sanctioned cloning as a means of self-preservation, but now, new cloning methods threaten to pollute the remainder of the human race. Partnered by fate, Aeon and Trevor must retrieve his research and destroy the movie’s version of Sky Lab, called Relis Station (it’s what you get when you crossbreed a blimp and a giant jellyfish), before humanity is plunged into extinction.

As you’ve guessed by now, Aeon Flux isn’t Oscar fodder; in fact its dark, dreary and dreadful attempt at re-envisioning Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World isn’t stylish on either end the camera unless you consider director Karyn Kusama’s penchant for fast-cuts and blurry action sequences to be the paragon of movie magic. The plot is abysmal and the dialogue is remedial—and with its high body count and gratuitous violence, there’s nothing remotely redeeming about this apocalyptic tale. The movie’s performances are as anemic as the plot: that Oscar-winning Theron would stoop to this level is utterly stupefying. Did her desire to be the next big-screen action queen prevail over her common sense? Did she sign the contract script unseen? It’s the only possible explanation. Csokas performance, as the “supposed” bad guy, is flat and passionless; he delivers his lines with as much conviction as a wet rag—which might explain why he had so few lines in The Lord of the Rings.

The special effects are solid enough in the film, but somehow the ball-bearing explosives and razor-sharp grass scenes really don’t seem all that original anymore. Where’s the innovation? It’s almost a perquisite now that action/adventure and sci-fi films must have ground-breaking effects, or compensate with a great script, A-list actors or an esteemed director. Aeon Flux has none of the above, much to its demise, and therefore, will be quickly forgotten.

God forbid there should be a sequel, but if there is, I issue this ultimatum: Either it employs a much better script or we’ll nickname it Aeon Sucks.

Rating: 1 1/2

Tags: Action, Sci-fi