Continuing my recent season of Guy Pearce films (Domino, The Seventh Day and Memory), Zone 414 was an easy sell as we depart for a “City of Robots” and a near dystopian future of pure mechanisation in smog filled cities and zones whereby the inhabitants are largely indistinguishable between the living, breathing human beings who eke out a meagre living, and the androids that live and work freely among them. There are “synths that want to be human, and humans that want to be synths” in this graffiti lined and walled off world of zones and a place that “must end” and where a synthetic humanoid named “Jane” (Matilda Lutz) is seen as the bright new future among the dirty detritus of a dystopian future life.
Headliner Pearce stars as “David Carmichael” who after a career in the police now works freelance as a private detective. “I live with what I do” he opines with a methodical detachment belying the heartache beneath his somewhat cold exterior. Bestowed a privileged pass into the walled off Zone numbered 414, his task is to track down the daughter of the wealthy and obnoxious owner of the corporation that ostensibly owns and runs the zone, and he calls upon the shining beacon and future of all newly proposed AI robots Jane, to assist him.
Written by Bryan Edward Hill and directed by Andrew Baird in his debut feature length film release, there is both much to admire and much that has already been seen before and famously better. First the admiration falls to both Lutz and Pearce for some enigmatic and engaging performances that are supported well by Travis Fimmel as the grotesque and obscene land and business owner, Jonathan Aris as his loyal brother and both Ned Dennehy and Olwen Fouere who each provide the vital ingredients of the bizarrely surreal and fetishized sexuality that soaks through the film. As does the often thumping synthesized and electronic hum of a musical soundtrack from a British composer by the name of “Raffertie”, the cinematography from James Mather (especially the overhead shots of the yellow taxi cab often used between scenes) and the costume designs of Susan Scott deserve a special mention too.
But as you would expect from a near dystopian future drenched in smog and decay I immediately pictured Blade Runner as well as the parallels to the uncertainty of their artificially intelligent “replicants”, as well as the more contemporary films of Alex Garland and Ex Machina and the Rupert Sanders directed Ghost in the Shell. The first two films named here are classics and masterpieces of their age, the third a lot less so and then comes Zone 414 which, whilst not a bad film by any means, adds very little to the genre.
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"The Essential Film Reviews Collection VOL.1" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.