This was 1 of the movies that probably did not appear in my radar, until the past couple of weeks when its trailer was shown few times in theaters. The thing that intrigued me was the name Peter Jackson. When it was promoted for advance ticket sales since last weekend, my wife and I decided to buy them for its first day. So let's find out more on the movie.
Brief Story Line (Warning Spoiler Alert!)
Set in the post-apocalyptic time, the cities of the world now were added with engines that enable them to move around and gather scarce resources & old technologies. London was one of those cities referred to as Traction which could capture smaller cities and collect their resources. Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving - Hacksaw Ridge, V for Vendetta etc) was one of London's respected leader and he had a loving daughter Katherine (Leila George). In London, there was a young historian named Tom (Robert Sheehan - Bad Samaritan etc) who knew a lot about old technology and loved to scavenge through stuff collected when London captured other cities.
Tom's normal life would soon changed when he somehow was caught in the middle of assassination attempt on Valentine by a mysterious young woman, later on revealed to be Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar - DaVinci's Demons TV series etc). Tom had no choice but to join Hester in roaming the outside world with dangers seemed to keep following her around including from an undead soldier called Shrike (Stephen Lang - Don't Breathe, Avatar etc). Their lives became even more complicated when they were involved with the Anti-Traction leader Anna Fang (Jihae) who had her own agenda against Valentine.
So what would happen to Tom and why did Hester want to assassinate Valentine? Find them all in this interesting & exciting adventure movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I mentioned above that I did not know anything about this movie and the trailer which seemed to be full of action using special effects, did not make me understand it better. However, once we got into the movie, soon we would immediately be captivated by the amazing idea of a city that could move and capture other cities. Never in my life that I could have ever imagined such a thing and here it was in a movie for us to see it really happening. My wife and I were totally amazed by this awesome scene and we could immediately picture it as an exciting movie.
As the story progressed, we would be introduced by the various characters in the movie which I personally thought was done adequately but it may not be satisfying those who "must" have proper and deep characters development. For me though it was sufficient and some background story was shown via conversations or flashbacks which I thought covered most of the ground. There were actually quite a lot of characters in this movie but some of them were shown in the latter part.
Talking about the characters, I was a bit ashamed that I did not recognize Hugo Weaving as Valentine here (perhaps due to his beard? but my wife could recognize him right away!). Anyway I enjoyed his performance as well as the two main cast by Hera Hilmar (whom I never seen before) and Robert Sheehan (whom I kind of like in his movie Bad Samaritan). Their chemistry was quite convincing & we got few brief amusing scenes between these two as well. Another character that really caught my eye was Anna Fang, which I thought was amazingly portrayed by the singer Jihae. Her appearance as the Anti-Traction leader was spot on and really kick ass (her fight moves were awesome). The rest of them were too brief to leave an impression, and I personally thought the character transformation of Katherine was a bit illogical. Not sure if it was supposed to be like that in the novel as I never read it.
This movie was filled with visually stunning action sequence with wonderful special effects. The appearance of the various moving cities with all the machines underneath them were awesome! The city where all planes "docked" were greatly created, but there was one scene of a static city which I thought was a bit poorly done and seemed too obvious made by computer (I think it was the matte painting). I really loved the background music of this movie especially during the intense part which added the element of suspense. I thought it was quite seriously done by the composer.
I also felt that this film was having a very fast pace, though in the middle it might have slowed down a bit (which my wife said she even got a bit sleepy). But the finale scene was quite breath taking and very impressive. One of the greatest part I felt, was the huge explosion scene with the amazing sound effect. For a movie with 2 hours + duration, it did not feel boring for me, but I could also understand if people might feel a bit disinterested with such an unusual premise for a long period. It also require full concentration to fully the grasp the whole story and might be tiring.
The film was promoted to be "from the filmmakers of The Lord of the Rings" which I thought was obviously to utilize the name Peter Jackson who served as one of the producers and writers. In addition it was directed by Christian Rivers in his directorial debut who previously worked together with Peter Jackson in the Lord of the Rings movies as visual effects supervisors. So it was no surprise the movie's special effects seemed to be maximized fully. Although the fast pace (which probably felt a bit messy for some) and lack of in depth character developments might not be to the liking of critics (as can be seen in the low critics rating).
Overall I feel this was an exciting adventure film with an uncommon premise, high intensity and fast pace, complete with some great visual effects. There were not a lot dramatic moments in here and everything seemed to be rushed (but not in a bad way for me). There was no mid or post end credit scene either. If you are looking for this type of movie, most likely you could enjoy it. Otherwise just need to have an open mind and imagination to see how awesome this movie was.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
PS: The movie was adapted from a novel of the same title written by Phillip Reeve who also wrote 3 more sequels after this book. Perhaps if this movie is successful enough, they might be interested in making sequels of the film
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