We’re repeatedly told the River’s programming has made her psychotic, but we see no evidence of this mostly, she acts like an alienated teenager who has occasional nightmares. The crew is introduced beneath the opening credits while the ship is on the verge of crashing, but the crash is immediately forgotten after it’s served its alleged purpose (giving the cast a chance to crack wise under pressure). He might be able to get away with this if his story were strong enough to work on its own, but somewhat surprisingly (considering that he comes to directing from being a writer first), his screenplay shows numerous signs of sloppiness: In some cases, the moves are so weak (particularly when Captain Malcolm faces off with the anonymous assassin halfway through) where things might as well be moving in slow motion.Īs a director, Whedon is far from inspired this is basically a point-and-shoot movie. This wouldn’t be so bad if they were handled with some panache, but the fight choreography in particular never rises about the BUFFY standards-which is to say, you can rent better stuff on almost any Hong Kong DVD you can find in the foreign section of your video store. And there are a handful of none-too-exciting action scenes, where no one ever seems in much real danger. Some second-rate dream scenes are randomly tossed in to liven things up as River experiences flashback/hallucinations from her programming. (The attempted humor does, however, manage to undermine any suspense: if the characters don’t take things seriously, there’s no reason why we should.) Certainly, the glossy, made-for-TV look is at odds with the supposedly harsh universe in which the story is set (where shooting someone is an act of mercy, because the alternative is so much worse). Things are further undermined by the performances (lots of macho posturing that feels as convincing as school boys pushing each other in the sandbox), nor by the tone of the script, with affects a bored, matter-of-fact, been-there-done-ennui that is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but rarely manages to be funny-there is one line worth chuckling over about forty-six minutes in, and maybe one or two after that. The story is uninvolving and moves with paralyzing slowness because Malcolm is such a reluctant hero. After more running away and hiding, the secret information in River’s brain is finally revealed, and Malcolm decides to risk his ship in order to do the right thing and get the word out to the population of the solar system. With a nameless alliance assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) searching for the girl, Malcolm and his crew hide out until his old girlfriend calls for help, Of course it’s a trap, but he goes anyway, hoping to learn something. After his latest mission (a robbery), he shows some unexpected feeling and decides to keep the girl on board, even after her programming kicks in and she nearly kills him. After being rescued by her brother, she ends up on the not-so-good ship Serenity, captained by the cynical Malcolm (Nathan Fillion, also seen in SLITHER), a free-lance mercenary always looking out for Numero Uno (rather in the mold of Han Solo and CASABLANCA’s Rick Blaine). The MacGuffin fueling the plot is that one character, a young woman named River (Summer Glau), has been programmed to be a post-hypnotic assassin (a la THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE), but she is also a psychic who was inadvertently allowed to scan some information that could be damaging to the planetary alliance responsible for her behavioral programming. If not for the saga of how Whedon resurrected the failed series (thanks to personal perseverance and fan enthusiasm), the film would have no claim to fame at all.įortunately, the story requires no familiarity with the source material. Unfortunately, that triumph extends only to the behind-the-scenes story of how Whedon managed to get the film made the film itself is a negligible piece of entertainment, competent but forgettable-basically, a made-for-television movie with delusions of grandeur. Writer Joss Whedon’s feature film directing debut-based on his canceled television series FIREFLY-is an inspiring triumph of an artist preserving over adversity to keep his dream alive even when it seemed impossible.
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