Mute is a Netflix production directed by Duncan Jones who made Warcraft, Moon and Source Code and tells the tale of Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) a mute Amish bartender/detective who is trying to track down his missing girlfriend Naad in futuristic Berlin meanwhile a former US military officer (Paul Rudd) is determined to get out of Berlin and head home to the US.
Mute is sadly not a good movie and its reasons are three:
- Firstly its look is very cheap it so desperately wants to be a new Blade Runner kind of film with its neon visuals, flying cars, giant billboards, crazy characters and central detective character that it feels like a fan film and all of it is so on the nose and so overdone that after a while I just got bored of it all.
And also the look is so much that classic digital smoothness where the frame rate has that extra smooth feel to it that at times it pulls you out of the watching experience it doesn’t have that traditional frame smoothness that you get with standard cameras both film and digital and it just gets boring to look at after a while.
- Secondly the performances here feel very flat and at times very weak Skarsgard comes across as a complete blank and while a mute central character can be interesting it has to be done with great care and great precision and that is not on display here it feels like it gets in the way of the central story and Skarsgard’s blank facial expressions really do not help.
Paul Rudd I liked his David Boon esque moustache and its clear he is trying to do something with his role but even then after a time I wasn’t all that interested and Justin Theroux just felt a little icky to watch his role and again at first it was fine but after a while I lacked interest.
- And this leads me to my third and final point and that is the mystery frankly it is very unfulfilling to watch and someone who is mute trying to find someone he loves could have been a great mystery provided it is done well but it isn’t done well here and when things do get resolved and I won’t say anything untowards on that front but I didn’t care I just didn’t.
And that is where I want to end this review I just didn’t care about this movie, I didn’t care about its visuals, performances or mystery and I’m stunned that Duncan Jones made this movie hopefully after a few years break he has a chance to refresh to stop to take stock and come back with a great film again as a man exhausted and needing a recharge is clearly on display here, 1 out of 5.
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