Absolon

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.

At the start and the end of the movie, an old man is telling the story many years in the future.

In 2007, the Neurological Degeneration Syndrome virus is first isolated. Eventually, because all the rain forests are cut down, the virus, transmitted through the air, kills 5 billion people. Only after a treatment called Absolon is found is the disease stopped, but Absolon is not a cure. And everyone needs it to live, and everyone gets it from a company called UPC. In this new world of the future, the only currency is time. Every time someone pays for a product, the price is referred to in minutes, hours, days, etc.

A scientist who has found the cure for NDS is murdered, and Det. Norman Scott and his partner Ruth (who seems to take hair care advice from Kelly Osbourne) are assigned to the case. Since UPC seems to have a monopoly on the product the whole world needs in order to stay alive, it would be in their best interest if the cure were not found. And the WJD seem to be like the FBI, but they are evil.

Det. Scott spends most of his time with Claire, a scientist who is also working on a cure. Occasionally, they are funny. UPC head Murchison and his goons (who include Walters) want them to fail and are willing to kill. And there is a new twist: Scott is given three days to live as a result of an experiment he didn't know he was participating in. This makes the search for the truth more urgent.

This started out as a really bad movie, and while it later showed promise, it never really improved, with two exceptions. Ron Perlman did a very good job as the head villain, and there was one other actor who really showed talent. He played a doctor (or at least some sort of medical professional) who took care of apparently homeless people and was raising two orphaned boys as his own.

Most of the other acting was mediocre or bad. Kelly Brook at least looked good, and she had her moments. Lou Diamond Phillips, despite being a respected actor, didn't show his ability here, in my opinion.

The movie showed little evidence of being set in the distant future. There were computer voices telling people to wake up in the morning, how much "money" they owed when they paid for products, and how much "money" they had left. One virtual reality scene had excellent visual effects (as the return to the "real world" was made, that is), but that seemed to use up the entire visual effects budget for the movie. We were supposed to pretend the cars weren't from the current decade, though cars have looked pretty much the same for years and I suppose it would cost too much to change them to look futuristic. One truck which didn't run looked like it would be nearly 100 years old.

It wasn't the worst movie ever.

I watched this movie mainly because of the actors that were in it, namely Lambert, Perlman, Philips. The plot is not entirely original (which ones are?) but interesting in detail and certainly good enough to support a good movie. Had the budget been bigger, this move could have been so much more. Fight sequences are the worst part - silly and unbelievable. If you removed most of them the movie would be much better. The cast are mostly good actors but the script and other aspects of the movie let them down - they mostly do the best they can with what they have been given. Lou Diamond Philips would have had more impact if he had toned down his performance - its too over the top. I tend to blame the script/director for this rather than the actor. He certainly has the looks and talent to play a great bad guy - but hes not great here. Of the three name actors he comes out worse. (If you want to see what he can really do Courage Under Fire.) Perlman does well in his rather limited role. Lambert is OK some of the time, but rather wooden the rest. Brook is great too look at and sort of OK but the script gives her no opportunity to stretch herself. I liked the actress who plays the Scotts partner - an interesting performance. She looks great too. I hope to see her more often (I resisted the temptation to say "see more of her" - it could be misconstrued). In many ways a bad movie but it has some unexpected good points that kept me watching despite the lows. One commenter on this forum says watching this movie is a waste of time. Perhaps, but then really watching any movie is strictly speaking a waste of time. This is especially so today, when hardly any modern movies have anything but laughable plots. There are many worse ways to waste your time than this movie.

As far as direct-to-video sci-fi, it hardly gets worse than Absolon, and that's saying a whole lot. As with about 97.9% of the people who have seen this movie, I rented it because Christopher Lambert was in it. This movie was bad even by Christopher Lambert direct-to-video standards. The plot is a ludicrous story of viruses and big business in the "future". This future doesn't look very futuristic, but this is explained away in the prologue by telling the viewer that because so many people died in a plague, the world's population has enough goods to last another 100 years. I guess that's why everyone drives 2001 Tauruses and Explorers then, not budget constraints, right? Lambert comes out OK here, as he once again rises above his awful material to give what is at the very least an acceptable performance. Other than that, watch out. Lou Diamond Phillips hams it up like never before, and even Ron Perlman is stunningly awful in his small role (I guarantee he wasn't on set for more than a day or two, as his character never leaves his desk, and about halfway through the movie he stops interacting in person with the other characters, instead using video conferencing). Additionally, I'm pretty sure that in this future, anyone can be a cop, because one of Lambert's fellow cops looks like she is about 10 minutes removed from a Ramones show (with dark red streaks in her jet-black hair) and another appears to be wearing some sort of Indiana Jones Halloween costume (fedora included). Kelly Brook is gorgeous as Lambert's love interest, although her acting talent is limited as is her willingness to do nude scenes apparently. I've never felt so teased by a female character's lack of nudity in my life.

The direction is awful, I'm sure half of the people that read this, if not more, could make a better movie. Barto uses some of the most ridiculous editing techniques I've ever seen, including an incredibly obnoxious fast-forward/slo-mo combination that hurts my eyes every time it comes on screen. Even worse than the direction is the music. It's one thing to have the John Carpenter-esquire simplistic synth score, it's quite another to try to make it sound complex. The score was obviously recorded entirely on a synthesizer on "Strings" setting to emulate an orchestra, and the effect is hilarious, giving every second of music in the film a Casio Keyboard quality. This is not the only problem with the sound, however, as I swear there was one point in a chase sequence when Brook moved her mouth as if speaking and no speech accompanied it.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and maybe THE worst, but I'm giving it 3/10 because it is unintentionally funny to the point of actually being watchable all the way through, if only to wait for the next misstep.

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.