Film Reviews

Aeon Flux

• Rating:
• Director: Karyn Kusama
• Starring: Charlize Theron
• Details: US, 93mins, 15s.

It's 2415 and the world in reduced to living in a fortified and quarantined city run by Chairman Trevor Goodchild (Csokas). The inhabitants live in this paradise in peace but it's a cold comfort as the malevolent government abduct people at will to conduct their own secret experiments. It's up to a small band of rebels, with Aeon Flux (Theron) their most valuable warrior, to halt the government and to grant freedom to the people. Flux is sent on a dangerous mission to take out Goodchild but when she gets him in her sights, she hesitates and is captured. In prison, Flux learns the true horror of the experiments.
Obviously Halle Berry lacked advisors when she hopped straight into a cat-suit after winning an Oscar for Monster's Ball and now Charlize Theron suffers the same fate. Aeon Flux is adapted from a cartoon filler on MTV, in which the joke was that the stylish, professional superhero was always getting killed; but the only humour here is MTV laughing at teenage boys paying money to watch Theron jump around, squat and do mid-air splits in a costume so tight, she's in danger of not getting it off in time for Oscar night. It kicks off promisingly with a close up on Theron's eye as she catches a fly in her eyelash and cutting to her striding down the street in fishnet tights, but it's all downhill from there as director Kusama cuts to the chase, the mission, the shoot-out, the fight scene, the love scene and the end before anyone can say 'this is tat'. Typically for an MTV-produced film, it's all style, flash and image. For a hi-octane sci-fi action flick, it's actually quite boring.

Review by Gavin Burke