Mute

Duncan Jones, director of the classic Moon and so-good Source Code, continues his slump that started with Warcraft: The Beginning. Actually, this mess qualifies as a total disaster, a film so bad Jones might find himself looking for sitcom TV gigs in the near future. Alexander Skarsgard plays Leo, an Amish bartender in future Germany (you read that right) who lost his ability to speak in a boat propeller accident as a kid. His girlfriend (Seyneb Saleh) disappears, sending him on a wild search that involves him hitting bad guys with big wooden sticks like Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall. In what seems to be another movie, Paul Rudd plays Cactus Bill, a crooked doctor trying to get back to the U.S. with his daughter. Cactus Bill hangs around with a pedophile doctor (Justin Theroux, saddled with a goofy wig) and, again, this part of the movie feels like a complete other film. Let me again point out that none of the parts of this film occupied by Skarsgard, Rudd or Theroux are any good. Skarsgard just runs around a lot looking all helpless, while the usually reliable Rudd resorts to a big, meaty mustache and lots of gum-chewing to look tough. (God dammit, I hate that!) Theroux relies far too heavily on the word “Babe!” to distinguish his character in what amounts to his worst role to date. You have to really be screwing up to make the likes of Rudd and Theroux look bad, and Jones makes them look awful. The future setting looks like a cheap Blade Runner knock-off, the dialogue is deplorable, and—I just have to say this again—it makes Rudd and Theroux look awful. That’s a cinematic crime, right there. (Streaming on Netflix.)