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Mutant Chronicles Review
Mutant Chronicles is a movie thats actually based on a game, a Swedish role playing game. Quite a successful one, that’s set in the future where the world is divided into four major corporate factions that battle the front lines to keep control of the countries and continents they own.
We join the movie in 2707 on the front line of a battlefield between two of the four factions. Mitch Hunter played by Thomas Jane and Nathan Rooker played by Sean Pertwee are two soldiers fighting on the frontline for one of the factions Capitol, while the opposing faction, the Bauhaus soldiers advance on their trenches. When the heavy military artillery is brought in, a shot is fired and an ancient machine is uncovered under the battlefield. This opens an underground civilisation of mutants who are now escaping onto the battlefield. when the mutants start overrunning both armies and multiplying at a rapid rate, Hunter manages to escape the battle via a ship but many soldiers including Rooker are left behind.
From here the story turns to brother Samuel played by Ron Perlman, the keeper of the chronicle which foretold the mutant uprising and also predicts that a team of men would destry the machine at the centre of the mutants lair. This leads Samuel on a recruiting missing that includes a varied cast of soldiers, warriors and Hunter to take up the mission.
Wow that’s a long winded synopsis and one that while quite interesting is very geeky, that is the problem with mutant chronicles in my eyes its so chock full of visual eye candy and cool set pieces which by all means are good, but when it gets to the scenes that don’t work very well and the acting isnt top drawer then the lack of story behind the characters, leaves us not really caring what happens to the characters and ultimately not caring what happens in the movie either. Thomas Jane is the only character who has any real story and its not quite enough to carry the movie through.
Mutant Chronicles was always going to be a guilty pleasure from the whole synopsis and the rather cool steampunk styling applied to the universe. But alas its’s not even a pleasure, it’s a guily chore. I actually think this is the longest review ive ever wrote and the reason why is that the story is so hard to sum up, I expect it should have been even longer but they had to cut it down for the movie, to fit all the action scenes in. I don’t think anyone is given a good deal in this movie, the script seems weak and rushed, none of the central chracters are given any real kind of story, bar a couple of really quite exciting action sequences the Mutant Chronicles is severly lacking in the foundation areas, in the visual and style areas it fares okay, impossible to recommend unless you’re a die hard fan of the game.
