Absolon (2003)- Christopher Lambert (1 ½ )

Director: David DeBartolomé

Stars: Christopher Lambert, Kelly Brook and Lou Diamond Phillips

Genre: -  Sci-Fi | Action | Thriller

MPAA Rating:  (For Violence)

Running Time: 96 Mins

Tagline: "They Control Us All"

Synopsis:

{According to IMDB}

"In a world ravaged by disease, he's the only cure... and the last hope for human-kind. "

Discussion

First of all, I love Christopher Lambert’s movies, specifically The Highlander movies (even if they are cheesy) Even if I do love his films; this one is not one of them. I am assuming 99.9% that Lambert was broke around the time of this movie. This is one f the silliest films about global virus and chaos I have ever seen. I mean it is so Goddamn unconvincing, it takes place in 2010 (we are now in 2011) and the future looks like 1999. I mean they do explain that a virus and some shit caused things to go weary; yet I have a hard time believing technology would be this bad. It even contradicts itself-in one scene we see Lambert seeing a third dimensional view of a crime see via computer…and then outside everyone has crappy cars wtf?

Ok, so let’s set aside my disclaimers and get to the flick. Lambert plays Detective Norman Scott. He is on the search of why a scientist was killed at point black in his own home. Through investigations we find out he was killed due to a cure he was working on. Which reminds me, if I have not mentioned it yet (which I have) this movie takes place in the future 2010 (ahem) and a virus called NES or something like that has ravaged humanity, and population has decreased. The only cure is ABSOLON, a drug that needs to be taken every day to prevent the virus from supposedly not spreading. I say supposedly because we find out later (spoiler alert, like it matters anyway) that the drug was being used by the government to control the population, so they can depend on the cure, which in fact was a similar form of the virus. It seemed the virus had disappeared years ago. Talking about government, it seems that in this future the president and leader lives in a black room with only one chair and a monitor.

This movie was just plain bad, sure i laughed at some unintentional things. I.e. Kelly Brook not being able to act for shit…even if she can’t act she is still hot, her boobs are huge by the way, and that is very important for me.  Also there is a scene that seems they didn’t fix in post production: Kelly Brook talks and nothing can be heard for a couple seconds…I was laughing. The other thing is also the stunts, for some reason, since the movie came out during The Matrix craze, there’s is a big deal of slow motion and fast edits to resemble that movie…yet it fails in epic proportions.  They even have the villain played by Lou Diamond Philips dress like Neo. He wears the shades, the coat, and even holds a futuristic gun, which looks like a rip-off from Robocop’s gun. I can keep going on and on about the ridiculousness that takes place in this “futuristic” film. Lastly we are supposedly being told this film perspective of a young boy who met Lambert’s character. I have a hard time believing that because he only met him for 10 min and he was merely a 12 year old…he wasn’t in the whole deal. By the end of the picture, to make matters even more hilarious, he is telling the story to his grandson. So the grandpa is either lying or he smoked a blunt…one of the two. Anyway this movie was funny, yet pretty bad. Im disappointed Lambert, I really am.

DVD

I got this DVD back in 2003 in a bin of 4 for 20 at blockbuster (yes I recall when and how I got my Movies) the thing I hate about blockbuster DVD’s though is the actual cases; I always discard them and put them in their own individual cases, or in an album…Even if they are shitty like this one. SO yeah I am not expecting this clunker to be available anytime in the future on Blu-Ray. I hope never LOL

Video

The movie is presented in 1:33:1. The aspect is for your regular non-widescreen TV, I am not surprised because this was a Sci-Fi Channel Original film…back then they didn’t bother with releasing them in widescreen. Now with the advent of HD-TV and Blu-Ray…They actually release them in that aspect. Anyway, Absolon has very low contrast, the colors never pop up. I saw this in my room, in my old TV (not HD-TV) and the whole thing had worse quality than an average VHS tape. That’s all I can say about the video.

audio

The audio is a 2 Channel surround sound. It is quite crummy and downright atrocious. The sound was very cheap. I was constantly annoyed by the cheap soundtrack that involved only a computer synthesizer. The gunfire also sounded unrealistic and mediocre. 

  

bottom line

 Bottom Line? Really? you know what to do! Avoid the turkey