Eden Sinclair (Mitra) was a little girl when she was evacuated from Glasgow in June 2008 during the outbreak of a deadly virus. Now 27 years later, she's leading a team (including Lester, Morfitt, Pertwee and Noone) back into still-quarantined Scotland. Her job is to find a cure for the virus, which has just been discovered in London. They come across a vicious gang of survivors led by Sol (Conway) before finding their way to Kane (McDowell), the doctor who knows how these people have survived all these years.

Entire sequences here are lifted from other films--zombie thrillers, medieval knight adventures, Star Trek away-team expeditions, Gladiator arenas and, most notably, all three Mad Max movies (at one point you expect Tina Turner to strut into Thunderdome). And while the references are good fun, we quickly realise that's all there is. Even the political drama about the struggle for power in London between the security chief (Hoskins), the Prime Minister (Siddig) and his second in command (O'Hara) feels underdeveloped.

The big-scale production design is impressive, packed with dark, foreboding touches and blackly hilarious asides. But this intensely messy, chaotic world comes at the expense of creating even a single interesting character. And it also makes little sense why the survivors still live as animals, with all the requisite symbols: piercings, tattoos, bondage gear and punk haircuts. Not to mention the nagging questions of logic that plague every scene (after 27 years, where do they find enough petrol for the massive car chase?).

To liven things up further, Marshall fills each frame with extreme gore that's often rough and nasty. In the end, the film is garish enough to keep us watching, but the big set pieces are directed and edited in that harsh style that leaves us to wonder what's happening. And they eventually turn cartoonish, with explosions that even Michael Bay would tone down. In other words, you should probably take this as a slapstick parody, even though it's doubtful the filmmakers meant it that way.

themes, language, very strong violence

12.Mar.08