This movie is about people who live in a shopping mall and then get zapped when they reach the age of thirty, and brave Logan who turns from being a people-zapper into a spy on runaways and then into a runaway determined not to get zapped.
Great, but why are the people being zapped when they get to thirty, and why are we supposed to care about these shopping centre dwellers? If the whole point of zapping the oldsters is to emphasise youth and beauty, why do all the shopping centre dwellers all wear exactly the same unflattering tunics, and why are we supposed to feel impressed about them meeting an old person, played by Peter Ustinov, or running around in some old buildings?
It reminds me of another 70s science fiction dystopia, Soylent Green, where Charlton Heston finds out that people are being recycled into food. Eating people is wrong but why are we supposed to care about Heston running around saying "Soylent Green is people"?
These crappy dystopian films set themselves up as some kind of "warning about a possible future" but actually they come across as warnings about the possiblitity of writing a silly script and then making it into a film.
I loved Jenny Agutter in Walkabout and Michael York in The Riddle of the Sands, but this cinematic outing is so much ridiculous pants. There is no dramatic tension at all, and I felt no involvement with the characters or concern about their fate at all.
Back to main page