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Synopsis:
In a dystopian future, the terrorist group Mutant Action attempts
the kidnapping of a famous bodybuilder, slipping a plastic bag over
their victim’s head. While the terrorists are arguing over whether
the bag should have holes in it, their victim dies…. The JQK TV
crime reporter (Jaime Blanch) gives an overview of the ten-year
history of Mutant Action, a group of disabled militants who wage war
against the beautiful and healthy. The reporter suggests that the
kidnap attempt was linked to the imminent release from jail of
Mutant Action’s leader, Ramon Yarritu (Antonio Resines), who has
half his face missing. The members of Mutant Action, all dressed in
evening clothes, collect Ramon when his sentence ends. Returning to
the group’s spaceship headquarters, Ramon finds everything in a
state of disrepair. Glancing at a large, incomplete artificial cake,
Ramon orders his subordinates to finish it while he goes to change
his clothes. He also tells the group’s mechanic, Handyman (Karra
Elejalde), who lives in a body brace, to feed "the cat", a monstrous
creature that lives beneath the floor of the spaceship. Ramon and
his team take their cake to the colossal mansion where the wedding
of wholemeal bread heiress Patricia Orujo (Frederique Feder) is
being held. The robotic guards will only let two of the gang inside
the compound. Siamese twins Alex (Alex Angulo) and Juan (Saturnino
Garcia) Abadis wheel the "cake" in. After a futile attempt to talk
the rest of the gang inside, Ramon orders M.A. (Alfonso Martinez),
an enormous deaf-mute, to blow the guards away. The gang pushes the
cake through the throng of guests. Ramon orders Alex and Juan to
make the mechanical band play a particular song at the moment that
Patricia and her husband, Luis Maria de Ostolaza (Enrique San
Francisco), are cutting the cake. This will be the signal for M.A.
to douse the lights, and for the Hunchback (Ion Gavella), who is
concealed in the cake, to seize Patricia. Unfortunately, when Alex
and Juan approach the jukebox, they find they have no money. As the
pair argues, Patricia plunges a knife into the cake. A scream of
agony is heard, and Patricia stares in horror at the bloody knife.
Mortally wounded, the Hunchback bursts from the cake and opens fire
with a machine-gun, slaughtering most of the guests. M.A. knocks
Luis unconscious, and Ramon captures Patricia. The police arrive.
Ramon sends M.A. to deal with them, but he is shot dead. The
Hunchback dies, but the rest of the gang escapes. Orujo (Fernando
Guellen), Patricia’s father, receives a video from Ramon, in which
he is instructed to take the one hundred million ransom to the Lost
Mine Bar on the planet Axturias. Orujo swears vengeance. In space,
the terrorists escape detection by posing as transporters of frozen
seafood. Alex and Juan play cards with Handyman, betting their
shares of the ten million ransom. A fight breaks out when Handyman
insists that the twins are due for only one share, not two. Timebomb
(Juan Viadas), a legless man who travels on a floating disc, and who
keeps explosives strapped to his body, turns on a news report of the
kidnapping. The gang members are shocked to learn that Ramon has
demanded one hundred million, not ten, as they were told. The gang
confronts Ramon, who scoffs at them for believing what they hear on
TV. Sending the twins and Timebomb to various parts of the ship to
do maintenance, Ramon then dispatches Handyman by feeding him to
"the cat". When the others, hearing Handyman’s screams, rush to the
control room, they find Ramon trying to "rescue" his victim. As
Handyman dies, Ramon turns to his remaining crew and announces
solemnly that there is a traitor in their midst….
Comments:
Great premise, disappointing execution…. For about half of its
running time – the first half-hour, the final fifteen minutes – this
is an inventive and entertaining movie; but unfortunately, between
those bookends it completely loses its way. Set in the
not-too-distant future, Acción
Mutante posits a world where
the desire for physical perfection has spawned a ruling class of the
most wealthy and beautiful; where robots do most of the actual work
while the "real" people spend their time striving to join the elite;
and where anyone not meeting the extreme physical ideal is shunned
and outcast. Rising up in opposition is the terrorist group, Mutant
Action, which consists wholly of the physically and mentally
disabled. Led by facially scarred Ramon Yarritu, the gang has made
it their mission to strike back against the worst manifestations of
the ruling culture – namely, any persons famous for their physique
alone, health organisations, and semen banks. In a special news
report, we see some examples of the terrorists in action, including
- in a sequence guaranteed to warm the heart of any couch potato
watching – the gunning down of a TV aerobics team in the middle of a
broadcast. Unfortunately, after Ramon is jailed on weapons charges,
the gang’s constant bungling (the bomb planted beneath a fashion
show goes off an hour after everyone has left the building) makes
them the object of laughter rather than terror. Collected from the
gates of his prison by his loyal followers (in an ice cream van, and
to the strains of the theme from
Mission: Impossible),
Ramon reveals his plan for rectifying the situation: the kidnapping
of the heiress to the Orujo wholemeal bread empire (!!) in the
middle of her wedding. Infiltrating the reception by posing as the
pastry chefs responsible for the cake, the terrorists find
themselves in the midst of the cream of the society against which
they are fighting – and if we didn’t sympathise with them before, we
do now! While the early part of
Acción Mutante is consistently
audacious, funny and gross, the wedding sequence is simply
unforgettable (and more than anything else, feels influenced by the
film’s producer, Pedro Almodovar). The wedding guests turn out to be
a writhing mass of "beautiful people", male and female, and
occasionally ambiguously gendered (in an imaginative touch, it is
these last – referred to scornfully by Ramon as "designer poofters"
– who earn the tribute of a kiss on the hand). In a moment of
supreme visual horror, the camera sweeps around the room – past the
robotic minister that presumably performed the ceremony - and gives
the viewer a horribly clear look at the guests: the makeup, the
hair, the clothing, the surgically rendered body shapes. (It is made
quite clear here that the society’s struggle for physical perfection
has had the same effect that it does in the canine world – i.e. a
concomitant loss of
mental
ability….) And in the midst of this mob of made-to-order morons, all
of whom dance enthusiastically to idiotic pop music (retro-pop
– you’ll recognise it!), the vacuous, giggling Patricia Orujo and
her equally asinine bridegroom prepare to cut their cake. This
should be the moment of the terrorists’ triumph, but again disaster
strikes. Waiting for the musical cue meant to precipitate his
emergence from the cake, the concealed Hunchback becomes an
inadvertent victim when Patricia plunges in a knife while Alex and
Juan, the Siamese twins, are still trying to find change for the
jukebox. As Patricia screams in horror, the Hunchback lurches out of
the cake and begins gunning down the guests. Too late, the twins
find the necessary coin, and as cheerful bubblegum music rings out,
a massacre ensues. The Hunchback dies of his stab wound, and the
hulking M.A. is shot by the police, but the rest of the gang escapes
with their hostage to the spaceship that doubles as their
headquarters. Blasting off, the terrorists head for the planet
Axturias, where the ransom drop is to occur. And that,
unfortunately, is where Acción
Mutante begins to fall apart. Having set up this
fascinating premise, and so skillfully created an entire society to
act as backdrop to it, the film-makers simply throw it all away.
Once on board the
spaceship, Ramon sets about ridding himself of the other members of
the gang, for reasons that are never revealed. Was he simply using
his fellow outcasts all along? Did his time in jail alter his
beliefs? Did his gang’s incompetent bungling turn him against them?
We never know – although Ramon’s actions suggest the first
alternative. The trouble starts when a television news report
reveals that the actual ransom figure is one hundred million, not
the ten million that Ramon told his followers. (In a hilarious
moment, the figure $100,000,000 whirls around onscreen like the
prize on a quiz show.) When the mutants venture to ask Ramon about
this discrepancy, he dismisses it, telling them that ten million is
the correct figure, and that the other is simply a piece of false
information meant to sow dissension amongst the kidnappers. Having
for the moment soothed his followers’ suspicions, Ramon then begins
disposing of them, one by one. The first to go is the Handyman, fed
headfirst to "the cat" and dying in a shower of gore and burped-up
body parts. As the twins and Timebomb arrive too late to help, Ramon
informs them that there is a traitor in the organisation. Bewildered
by this revelation, the others set themselves to discovering the
guilty party (Alex having to reassure his twin that it isn’t
him). Ramon corners
Timebomb in his laboratory and detonates the explosives he wears
strapped to his body. Shortly afterwards, Alex wakes to find himself
covered in blood, and discovers that his twin has been dispatched
via a hatchet in the forehead. Alex pulls a gun on Ramon but,
hampered by his dead brother, loses his advantage, and a violent
fight ends with Ramon apparently killing Alex with a blow to the
head. During the struggle, the spaceship’s faulty brake line is
severed, and the ship crashes on the planet Axturias. Both Ramon and
his hostage survive the impact, and must walk endless miles across
the desert to the rendezvous. Meanwhile, Alex, too, has staggered
from the wreck, and follows the pair torn between his determination
to revenge himself on the treacherous Ramon, and his feelings for
Patricia, for whom he has conceived a seemingly hopeless passion.
What humour is to be
found in the next stretch of the film centres about Alex and his
travails. Collapsing in the middle of the desert, he eventually
comes to to find vultures picking at his increasingly pungent twin.
Alex is rescued by a blind miner (who demonstrates his skills in
taxidermy on the unfortunate Juan) before being ambushed by a
whooping mob of psychotic miners, and having a close encounter with
the local Hangin’ Tree - although luckily, the miners choose to
string up Juan rather than Alex himself. Alex does finally escape
this predicament, and covers the final leg of his journey hampered
not just by his dead brother, but by the Hangin’ Branch and a length
of rope as well. Meanwhile, Ramon and Patricia have been undergoing
trials of their own - none of which, I’m sad to say, is even
remotely funny. The early stages of the film establish Patricia as
the very embodiment of the society that Mutant Action was striking
against. A closer look at the girl further reveals that she is a
giggling, motormouthed, airheaded bimbo. This, we gather, is
supposed to excuse the escalating torrent of abuse that she is
subjected to over the course of the film. Our first look at the girl
at the kidnapper’s headquarters reveals her chained to a chair with
her mouth, not gagged, but stapled
shut. (That this shot is the still most often reproduced from the
film is a worry in itself.) After being forced to watch the bloody
elimination of the crew, Patricia then suffers through Ramon’s
attempts to "clean her up" before her father sees her, having the
staples very slowly extracted, one by one. This has barely been
completed before the spaceship crashes on Axturias. Patricia is
knocked out briefly, then regains consciousness to reveal that she
has developed a wholly inexplicable passion for her abductor. This,
even Ramon finds ridiculous. "Not Stockholm Syndrome! Not
now!" he exclaims
in disgust, as Patricia tries to demonstrate her devotion to him by
offering to help kill her father. Determined to make the Lost Mine
Bar in the minimum amount of time, Ramon starts the trek across the
desert, dragging Patricia along the ground by her hair. Tiring, he
then insists that the girl walk after him, their journey being
broken only by Ramon stopping to punch his hostage hard in the face
every time he feels that she’s talking too much - which is often.
Needless to say, Patricia bounces back from each of these assaults
more obsessed with her abductor than ever. This section of the film
reaches its nadir when the pair falls into the hands of a trio of
crazed, sex-starved miners, who proceed to tie Patricia to a bed and
gang rape her - an incident shrugged off by the film-makers and the
victim with equal casualness. The next thing we know, Patricia and
Ramon have escaped, and are on their way to the rendezvous. Just how
this is managed we never exactly learn, although we do know that it
was facilitated by Patricia giving a ten year old boy the gift of
her used underpants....
Acción Mutante
redeems itself somewhat during the final section of the film, where
it manages to regain at least part of the air of anarchic black
humour that infused the opening sequences. The Lost Mine Bar is the
scene of the ransom drop, and pretty much every character who is
still standing converges upon it, including ubiquitous crime
reporter Jaime Blanch and his camera crew. In an hysterical scene,
Ramon and Orujo conduct their ransom negotiations from the opposite
ends of the bar, pausing between each statement to allow the
cameraman and the boom mike guy to scuttle into position.
Unfortunately for Ramon, he learns that Orujo doesn’t
want Patricia back
- and that he has every intention of committing suicide and taking
everyone at the Lost Mine with him. This final threat is forestalled
by the arrival of the vengeful Alex (Juan still in tow), and the
film finishes pretty much as it began - with a bloodbath. Despite
this, Acción Mutante
manages, most unexpectedly, to provide a
happy ending. Less unexpectedly, perhaps, it is a happy ending
involving gunfire, explosions, severed limbs, and an astronomical
body count.
It is a great shame
that Acción Mutante
runs off the rails so completely during its middle section, because
in many ways it has a great deal going for it. Everything about the
film belies its comparatively low budget. In particular, it looks
fantastic, creating a believable grungy world for its mutants to
inhabit, and a hilariously repellent environment for its beautiful
people, too. (My only complaint is that some of the scenes were a
little underlit, but this may have been my print.) The special
effects are also well executed. (The same team would later do
Delicatessen - it shows.) Up until the disposal of
the mutants by their leader, this is a bloody, funny, wildly
imaginative exercise. However, the killing off of the disabled
terrorists leaves the film struggling to find a voice. Incredibly,
it seems as if director Alex de la Iglesia and co-writer Jorge
Guerriaechevarria simply didn’t realise the potential of the
scenario they had devised – nor what effect it would have upon an
audience. We want to know more about these "mutants" and their
battle against soulless perfection; and about the workings of the
society that created the two opposing forces. However, the
film-makers seem to have had no such interest in the world or the
people that they created. Although much of Acción Mutante seems informed
by Peter Jackson’s early work, and other films such as Brian Yuzna’s
Society, what struck me while watching it was how
completely its premise could have been lifted from a John Waters
movie. But of course, if this had
been a John Waters movie, it would truly have been about the mutants
- their banding together, their battle, and ultimately - can we
doubt it? - their victory! But no such sympathy for the dispossessed
is present in Acción Mutante.
Instead, Alex de la Iglesia shows the same contempt for the mutants
that his ruling elite does, depicting them - with the possible
exception of Alex - as a bunch of hopelessly stupid, bungling
incompetents, easily used, abused, and when convenient, disposed of.
(A propos, I was amused to note that Ramon keeps his motley crew in
line by using exactly the same tactics as those employed by Spencer
Tracy in Pat And Mike.) Once Mutant Action has been
bloodily disbanded, we are left with a story that is occasionally
funny, frequently violent, and almost ceaselessly tasteless - but
which displays all too little of the satirical humour that underlies
the opening sequences, and which there serves to disarm many of the
story’s uglier aspects. In the end,
Acción Mutante is a film suffering from an
increasingly common complaint: it has no heart.
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