Mitch is part of a Dirty Dozen-style group of fighters from the four different corporations -- including Sin City's Devon Aoki, Speed Racer's Benno Fürmann, and Hellboy II's Anna Walton -- brought together by Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), a monk who convinces ruler Constantine (a more monotone-than-usual John Malkovich) to let him have a ship and a squad of troopers so they can go blow up the mutants' underground facility with some kind of ancient bomb. You know, that old chestnut.
Following Samuel's ancient book, the group ventures into the heart of enemy territory as the rest of humanity flee Earth for refuge on alien colonies. Along the way, unlikely saviors will emerge, heroes will fall, and mutants will be cleaved, shot, burned, blown up and all-around ass-kicked in the name of saving the world.
The good news is that Mutant Chronicles isn't the unwatchable, Battlefield Earth-like wreck that many of you may have convinced yourselves it was going to be. No, it's a pretty routine and even entertaining at times genre flick. It's no worse than some of the Resident Evil movies, but that's certainly damning it with faint praise. Overall, Mutant Chronicles boasts some decent production values and visual effects (the 300-style digital backgrounds are pretty sweet), but all its key problems are on paper.
The story is sloppy, the dialogue is horrible (although the cast does their best to deliver their lines with conviction), characters aren't well developed, and the backstory/mythology is set-up in a hurried, slapdash manner. Imagine there are no countries, John Lennon sang, but he likely never imagined them being replaced by a small number of mega-corporations. That idea no longer seems so far-fetched these days, does it? I would have liked the movie to go further with developing that world, but it's ultimately just an excuse to make things look grimy, bleak and "futuristic".
Ironically, the thing that kills interest in Mutant Chronicles the quickest are the mutants. There's not much to differentiate the mutants in this film from the creatures in any number of other post-apocalyptic movies. They move fast, snarl a lot, are relatively mindless and pretty damn tough to kill. They're also not very scary, with some of the kills being downright silly. Director Simon Hunter makes a few odd choices in the action scenes, such as point-of-view shots during hand-to-hand fights that might provoke unintentional laughter rather than an adrenaline rush.
B-movie vets Jane and Perlman seem to be the only cast members aware of what a cheese fest they're in. Perlman has mastered being able to deliver a bad line with a straight face and still make you think he's cool, while Jane appears to knowingly play Mitch as a caricature of the hard-ass action hero. Every line is delivered with a grizzled, whiskey-soaked rasp that makes Batman sound like Truman Capote. But it's two-time Oscar nominee John Malkovich who deserves mention not for delivering a great performance but rather one of the laziest, most disinterested ones in recent memory. It's as if Malkovich simply showed up to work without preparation, read his lines off a cue card with zero inflection save for intermittent indigestion.
Overall, Mutant Chronicles is passably entertaining, a mindless monster mash chock full of corny dialogue, hammy acting, and over-the-top action scenes. Those who enjoy silly genre movies could do worse than to check this out, but consider yourself warned.
2 out of 5 Stars, 4/10 Score
