Aeon Flux - DVD Review

'features action that appears to have been choreographed by The Teletubbies'

Glancing down MTV Films output doesn't exactly fill you with confidence when you know you'll be watching something by them soon. Although their first effort, Joe's Apartment, flopped disastrously at the box office, MTV have had a knack in recent years for mainly churning out produce that makes huge amounts of money but is universally derided by critics.

That is, except for Aeon Flux, which followed Joe's Apartment in not even re-capping 50% of its budget and being hated by critics and moviegoers alike. Approaching this was like anticipating the budget during a recession: you know it's going to be bad, the question is just how hard it'll hit you.

And the answer to that is pleasantly, not particularly hard. Sure, Aeon Flux is rubbish. It features some terrible acting, a woeful script and action that appears to have been choreographed by The Teletubbies. But after an hour, I realised that I genuinely felt nothing towards it; no hate, love, affection or disdain. Aeon Flux had done the previously impossible: it had made me feel completely apathetic to a work of cinema.

The reason behind this, I suspect, is a melding of two of its large negative points; its lack of character development and its blatant ripping off of any work of science fiction you care to name. The lack of any character that I cared one jot about ensured that, no matter what was happening on screen, its consequences to me were meaningless, therefore completely ridding me of any vested interest in anyone or anything. The ripping off meanwhile (particularly of elements from Equilibrium, itself a shameless drawing of ideas from more classic material), really meant that I'd actually seen Aeon Flux a dozen times before under different monikers and with different actors.

So, whilst I can't bring myself to entirely decry Aeon Flux as worthless (it's not as offensively bad as some movies I don't care to give publicity to), I can't pick out anything remarkable about it either that should compel you to hunt it down. It is that rarest thing in cinema: a none-entity, a film lacking reason to exist and inspiring a feeling only of laconism.

Look further...

'The film has a very stylish feel to it, but unfortunately the dialogue didn’t live up to the visuals' - Thoughts Of A Steel Monster, 5.9/10