Replay: Mutant Chronicles

Mutant Chronicles is the kind of film I started this blog for. The average critic would sit and watch the first twenty-five minutes and turn it off in disgust. The plot is absent and it's sorely in need of editing. With a good opening narration, the entire first half hour could have been cut down to five minutes. The cheese even includes two best friends being forcefully separated, one bravely sacrificing himself, as the survivor screams: "Noooooo!"

This would have coloured the reviewer's opinion against a film that is often derivative and has some terrible dialogue. As such, they would have failed to notice just how fresh the few original touches feel, the quotable lines amongst the cheese, the great performances, thrilling action sequences and fun ideas.

With the same real actors-CGI sets concept originated in Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, the plot, based upon a roleplaying card game, follows a team of eight, Dirty Dozen-style commandos, in a steam-punk future that combines space travel with WWI-era stylisation, on a secret mission to destroy an alien machine that is turning the dead into mutated zombies. Cue spaceships that have engine rooms like steam trains and medieval monks fighting alongside thickly-accented German soldiers with moustaches. The bat's-arse crazy result is hit and miss, but fun even when it doesn't hit the mark.

Once the mission gets started, things pick up and the better aspects of the film stand out from the B-movie cliches. After all, unless there was something more than a simple straight-to-DVD flick going on here, how could the film have attracted a cast chock full of the best genre actors around? John Malkovich, Hellboy's Ron Pelman, Dog Soldiers' Sean Pertwee, Punisher's Thomas Jane, Sin City and The Fast and The Furious' stunning Devon Aoki, all put in much more than phone-it-in read throughs.

This isn't going to win any Oscars, but the film nonetheless deserves to be seen. It's out to rent and buy now.