I'm slightly torn in writing this review. On the one hand, it's essentially a two hour trailer for a better film. It's all unrelated action sequences and shaky montages to music. Does it really warrant critique in the same manner as an actual film? I don't complain about the plots if music videos, and this was just a really long one. With bad music. At this point in the review I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the use and general existence of a truly abominable cover of The Pixies "Where Is My Mind."
On the other hand, it's distended nonsense throughout. Fantasy is used as an excuse rather than a plot point. It makes no attempts to explore it's own premise. Parallels, critical to it's theme are either inconsistent or entirely absent. It doesn't say anything. It just wants the talking to stop so it can get to the clockwork zombie Nazis.
Which brings me back to my original problem. This film has clockwork zombie Nazis in it. Attractive women in short skirts assault them in trenches with a mixture of ancient weaponry and giant robots. Was I really expecting a Gilliamesque treatise on the illusory nature of the cinematic experience? Why on God's green earth would I take this even slightly seriously?
Well, because the film itself does. With it's themes of lobotomy and prostitution, it's stylised bleakness and grim colour scheme it really wants to be seen as dark and even edgy. It's entirely humourless and gave no sense that it's tongue is even aware it owns cheeks, which is a shame as this is the one thing that could have redeemed it.
The action, extreme as it is, wears quickly thin through repetition and lack of motivation, and the "pastry" that surrounds this "meat" is dry and gritty, with no flavour of it's own. A deeply unsatisfying meal, but one I can see people happily gobbling down with their stale popcorn. Over the teeth and past the gums.
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