Utopia

Westworld knockoff with a Sin City sleaze. Not enough budget or high enough rating to succeed at either genre. If not for all the gratuitously bawdry burlesquity presented throughout, the film would be insufferable in its entirety. The plot is melodramatically corny and takes itself too seriously. The acting is wooden. The characters are annoying. The gunplay is absurdly overwrought. The ridiculous story drags on and on with too many long takes of the lead airhead bimbo emoting like a deer in the headlights. The fast forward button is you friend if you commit all the way through to the horrible ending.

Have You ever been in love? Really in love?

If You have, then you can easily identify with the main male character of the story. He has one goal and nothing and nobody can distract or dissuade him from pursuing this goal, at any cost.

How can one man faced with bewitching beauties all around still reign in his feelings ? Simple: He is in love with one woman...just one!!

This story is so inspiring, if you keep this in mind. Outward beauty is truly just skin deep. Men who focus on a woman's external assets are easily ensnared, led astray and deceived into embracing wayward women with no love in their hearts.

Whatever the obstacles facing him, this man strives to overcome them all, risking his life if necessary. And all of this for just ONE woman? What is she to him? What does he see in her? What makes her so unique amongst all the ravishing maidens at Utopia?

Why not sit down and immerse yourself in the story, whilst striving to perceive the hidden lessons woven into this movie, concerning love and how love can drive a man to overcome any obstacle that keeps him from his beloved one?

This film is like a Westworld (1973) clone that got kidnapped by Taken (2008) and was forced to make awkwardly-paced cliche-ridden babies. The opening scene sets the tone with a flythrough of a rather shabby looking Utopia and ends with a trashy scene between the two most wooden actors in the entire film. It's about as promising as a soggy pancake.

While we're on the topic of acting ... the lead actors do their best to look serious, but it's as convincing as a toddler pretending to be a detective. They're fine, they're serviceable, but it's not like anyone's going to be dusting off their Oscar trophies after this. The minor characters, however, are an entirely different story. The various Utopia women seem like they were cast less for their acting abilities and more for their ability to look good in very little clothing. It's as if the director told them, "Just take off most of your clothes and then read these lines as if you've never seen a script before." The various male clientele are just as terrible. Some of them might as well be twiddling their moustaches.

To be fair it's not all a disaster. The action scenes, especially the opening bathroom fight, are actually pretty decent. Whoever choreographed those sequences has a future in the business. The fights are the highlight, because let's face it, without them this film would be nothing more than a sad combination of a predictable plot and badly-delivered lines.

So the story's about a Special Ops type man who dives into a Westworld-style environment to rescue his ex-partner. She's been kidnapped and forced into a disturbing world of indulgence for wealthy men, with the women relegated to something close to AI servitude.

It's a decent watch. The plot's fairly predictable for the most part, but the final ten minutes deliver a clever twist that raises some thought-provoking questions. Unfortunately, those ideas are left hanging and never really explored, which feels like a missed opportunity.

That said, it's an entertaining 90 minutes if you like this kind of thing. The stunts are excellent, the production values hold up well, and there are a few moments that lift it above your standard action-thriller fare.

I don't agree with some of the harsher reviews, to be honest: the acting is solid enough, with a couple of standout performances. And all the fuss about the nudity? Probably coming from Americans. Odd how there's plenty of outrage over nudity, yet the extreme violence barely gets a mention. Since when is nudity worse than violence? Makes you wonder.