Bad Land: Road To Fury. (15.)
Directed by Jake Paltrow.
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Michael Shannon, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Hobbs and David Butler. 100 mins
Whatever time may be stated in their credits, post-apocalyptic visions of the near future always feel like they are set twenty years from now. When I was younger they would strike a nerve of disquiet – this is what my middle aged years would be. Now, as I contemplate the pitiful nature of my probably pension provisions and the prospect of working on till I drop down dead, they have lost much of their dread. In Bad Land drought has reduced the USA to a fractured, wild west state where water is the most precious commodity. It doesn't seem so bad; especially as Bad Land is quite the mildest vision of social collapse.
This was originally called Young Ones. Changing the title from a Cliff Richard song to a Springsteen one is some kind of improvement but the post hyphen part, with its cheap allusion to the new Mad Max film, is brazenly fraudulent. There are a few roads, but there is precious little fury. Instead, it offers a rather Steinbeckian tale of generational dysfunction in a dustbowl, depression era America where farmers and labourers try to scratch out a living. Shannon is powerful as the father trying to hold his family together backed up by his loyal son, Smit-McPhee (Dawn if the Planet of the Apes, The Road) who seems to be carving out a niche playing sensitive sons in tales of life after society has collapsed.
But Paltrow's debut is so certain of its dramatic heft that it doesn't bother to communicate it to the audience, who are left an arid, bloodless and crushingly dull vision. These Bad lands aren’t treating us good.
Bad Land: Road To Fury. (15.)
Directed by Jake Paltrow.
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Michael Shannon, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Hobbs and David Butler. 100 mins
Whatever time may be stated in their credits, post-apocalyptic visions of the near future always feel like they are set twenty years from now. When I was younger they would strike a nerve of disquiet – this is what my middle aged years would be. Now, as I contemplate the pitiful nature of my probably pension provisions and the prospect of working on till I drop down dead, they have lost much of their dread. In Bad Land drought has reduced the USA to a fractured, wild west state where water is the most precious commodity. It doesn't seem so bad; especially as Bad Land is quite the mildest vision of social collapse.
This was originally called Young Ones. Changing the title from a Cliff Richard song to a Springsteen one is some kind of improvement but the post hyphen part, with its cheap allusion to the new Mad Max film, is brazenly fraudulent. There are a few roads, but there is precious little fury. Instead, it offers a rather Steinbeckian tale of generational dysfunction in a dustbowl, depression era America where farmers and labourers try to scratch out a living. Shannon is powerful as the father trying to hold his family together backed up by his loyal son, Smit-McPhee (Dawn if the Planet of the Apes, The Road) who seems to be carving out a niche playing sensitive sons in tales of life after society has collapsed.
But Paltrow's debut is so certain of its dramatic heft that it doesn't bother to communicate it to the audience, who are left an arid, bloodless and crushingly dull vision. These Bad lands aren’t treating us good.
