Mortal Engines

Starring: Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Stephen Lang
Director: Christian Rivers
Based on the book "Mortal Engines" by Philip Reeve
Set in a post apocalyptic world after the “Sixty Minute War” where archeologist Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving) has turned the city of London into a giant, predator city (a giant city on wheels) and has united the inhabitants under the philosophy of Municipal Darwinism. He uses this predator city, as well as his influence through Municipal Darwinism, to swallow up smaller communities and mine them for resources. Stopping his advances is an organization called the Anti Traction League, which has built the Shield Wall to stop him. Also out to get Valentine is Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), who wants revenge for the death of her mother. Hester gets her shot at Valentine but it is ruined by Tom (Robert Sheehan), who looks up to Valentine. Tom then learns of Valentine's true nature and is left for dead. With the help of fugitive Anna Fang (Jihae), Hester and Tom must stop Valentine and also evade Shrike (Stephen Lang), the reanimated humanoid who will stop at nothing to track down Hester. Whew! That was a lot of plot to explain, which in all honestly only makes up the first 30 minutes of a bloated 2 hour running time. To the movie's credit, it really moves and doesn’t give you a lot of time to linger on exposition. It is easy to see what Peter Jackson and company saw in the books, as the sight of giant cities rolling Mad Max style across the desert is visually appealing. I can’t help but wonder what it would have looked like with him directing and not just writing. His longtime VFX maestro Christian Rivers doesn’t do a bad job, but he does seem out of his league. I have to admire the movie a little, because it’s a huge risk to make a big budget spectacle film that isn’t Lord of the Rings or comic book related. Jupiter Ascending tried and failed and Mortal Engines is most likely going to suffer a similar fate. Even the movie seems to know this despite being based on the first of four novels by Philip Reeve. It definitely ends in a fashion that closed it off to a sequel should it not perform at the box office. You don’t go to a movie like this for the acting, but I enjoyed Hugo Weaving’s villain. He has the villainous growl down pat and probably could play roles like this in his sleep. The rest of the cast is rounded out by relative unknowns, but Hera Hilmar does her best to carry emotional weight of the story. I’d never seen her in anything but I’d love to see her get more roles and show some range. Robert Sheehan does his best Eddie Redmayne impression as the bumbling nerdy male lead. Peter Jackson definitely knows spectacle and Mortal Engines delivers that by the rolling city-load. Too bad it doesn’t have much to offer besides that. C-