Absolon

Review on the movie "Absolon (2003)"

As always with any movie that casts Christopher Lambert I approach with trepidation. This is because his films, other than the original Highlander, always seem to be of B grade or less quality. Absolon only further reinforces that reality. The premise of the plot: that some major corporation is controlling the supply of a drug that is required for sustaining life is interesting enough. The execution of the plot and the production of the movie are poor at best. Here are examples. 1. The soundtrack is poor (pitiful and boring is a better description) 2. Lou Diamond Philips performs at his usual bad actor level. Every time he tries to act like a tough guy is deplorable. 3. The time period was after 2012 yet the sets were decorated with modern items, at times even old items: old cars, old telephones, old signs. Very little effort or expense was made to give the impression of a future world. 4. Overused and insipid clichés: a. Girl blowing smoke from barrel of a shotgun after killing someone. b. Worn out scene of last second salvage from a ticking time bomb. c. Black lady constantly applying lipstick in futile attempt at sexy and tough. 5. Fight scenes are unbelievable, too choreographed and too long. A metal pipe to the rib cage will drop a horse, but not our protagonist (even after he has already taken a few blows to the head). 6. Sidekick female doctor with a big set of tits (actually a really nice rack) is so obvious an attempt to add sex/beauty to a movie that hopeless lacks everything else. You have poor actors (Lou Diamond Philips, Christopher Lambert, Ron Perlman), poor background music, poor sets, poor plot execution basically you get a poor movie. On a scale of 1 to 10 this one gets a 3.5 at most.

With a plot that's lifted a great deal from The Omega Man, Absolon is a decent science fiction film about a post apocalyptic world where our lack of concern for the environment has nearly wiped the world out with a virus.

Said virus was said to be lurking beneath the Amazon rain forest which we completely wiped out and it in turn did a job of humankind. Those that survive depend for their survival on a drug called Absolon. Like AZT with AIDs, the drug inhibits the virus, but affects no cure.

One thing that this crisis has caused is a collapse of all governments in the world. We've finally achieved one world because there aren't enough of us to worry about racial or religious or language differences. What is now society is just haves and have nots, haves being defined as those who have access to as much Absolon as the need.

Local cop Christopher Lambert is put on a case involving the killing of a scientist who was on the track of a cure, The world police is also interested, but when Lambert starts asking too many questions especially after the case appears solved, they get nervous. Real nervous because their head cop, Lou Diamond Phillips tries to kill Lambert and he's on the run with scientist Kelly Brook.

The film moves along at a nice pace and quite frankly I'm surprised no one has seen the parallels in this film with the current AIDS crisis. There is another good performance in this by Ron Perlman, better known now as Hellboy, who is the industrialist controlling the supply of Absolon. He is one evil dude.

It's not a great film, but I don't think Absolon quite warranted the trashing it got from some reviewers.

OK - seen this one this afternoon with my girlfriend. As usual, Brad Mirman delivers an interesting Cyberpunk-like script (even if some plot- holes are "intriguing" - to say the least), as usual, Christopher Lambert is the only one in the cast to be a little bit involved. The photo is okay too and the score has its moments (even if the "Absolon Theme" by Howie B. is almost without interest). Some good FX (very few in fact).

But for his directional debut, David Barto overused already outdated effects (slow/fast effects in the editing for example), made some serious continuity mistakes (the car chase in the 2/3 of the movie for example) and directed it like a poor TV-movie. That's it : Absolon is no more than a (very cheap at times) TV-film : the female cast is terrible - even if enjoyable to see, Lou Diamond Philips looks like he's not really enjoying his part (he needs a new agent) and overplays it, Ron Perlman plays it simply bored (i'm sure he was on the set one day only : he always stays at the same place). Some secondary characters are far more better (dialogues, characterization), that is counter-balancing a little bit but not enough to save the film from oblivion.

I'm very sorry to type this but some things are definitely missing here : a cast, a budget (twice would have been enough i think - how much it cost : no more than 5M$ i'd say), some more concerned "stars" (with the exception of Lambert), a good editor and finally a director with some idea and motivation.

In the future, all money has been obliterated in exchange for a chronic medicine which treats (but doesn't cure) a universal plague that everyone suffers from. However when an actual cure for the plague is produced, the government wants to kill the scientist due to the shock it would have on the economy, Christopher Lambert, Lou Diamond Phillips and Ron Perlman are aboard to make this more watchable than it would be. Absolon is a straight to video movie (Obviously) which I watched on the Sci-Fi channel, for some reason I have an uncanny ability to seek out the STV movies independent from them and some how avoid their made for Sci-Fi movies, consider it luck I guess. However this being said Absolon is a competently made B.movie but it is also clichéd, unexciting and dreary. Lambert is actually not too shabby and there are moments when you suspect that the movie is going to open up and get really interesting but alas it never does. It always comes close to a boil but it loses steam due to an uninspired gunfight or something gratuitous to it's plot. Had Absolon concentrated on it's futuristic dwellings this would have been good, however because it lacks atmosphere the movie feels ordinary and by the numbers. Still fairly watchable in a low expectations kind of way.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

The biggest mystery about ABSOLON is how the filmmakers managed to get 33 people to register and then give the film a perfect "10" score. It's ridiculous, of course, and I'm willing to bet even star Christopher Lambert would agree.

ABSOLON is yet another low-budget film with minimal resources, and yet it seems unaware of this fact since the movie is set "sometime in the near future". I.e. Things are just similar enough that the filmmakers can get by, but there are differences such as a VR and an artificial intelligence computer that lets us know it's "the future". Of course the VR only shows up in the first 3 minutes, and the artificial intelligence computer is basically a woman talking through a speaker.

ABSOLON is not an awful movie, but it is a bad movie. It's basically a string of cliches and "Evil Corporation" formulas thrown into scenes of Lambert dodging assassins led by a cheesy Lou Diamond Phillips, now trying to make himself the King of Low-Budget Cheesy Villains.

Skip this film.

3 out of 10.