Aeon Flux (2005)

The year is 2415. 400 years after a virus wiped out half of the world's population, the people that survived the virus now live in Bragna, a fortified city that is surrounded by a wall isolating the people from the virus infested rest of the world. Living in Bragna City, Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), a mysterious female assassin who works for a underground group of rebels led by Handler. Aeon's latest assignment is to assassinate Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas), a member of the council that controls Bragna City. When Aeon's younger sister Una is killed by government agents, Aeon disobeys orders and decides to protect Trevor, and suspects Trevor's brother Oren and the council members are plotting against Trevor. And when Handler learns Aeon failed the mission, Handler orders Aeon to be eliminated, and Aeon must risk everything as she not only protects Trevor, but also uncovers secrets and answers about her mysterious past and the government and all life in Bragna City itself. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Production was delayed for over a month while Charlize Theron recuperated from a neck injury she sustained while slipping during stunt training. After the injury, Charlize Theron still insisted on doing her own stunts, although she does have stunt doubles clause in her contracts. The production team first choose Brasilia as the city in which to shoot the movie. But because of logistic problems they ended up in Berlin, where they found most of their locations, such as a recently built crematorium and underground sewers dating from before the Second World War era.

A nice try at a sci-fi utopia that is anything but. The sets were wonderfully sci-fi organic which gave the film a different feel then most movie cybergoth future worlds. So why does everybody hate this movie? Well, Charlize Theron is miscast I think. Charlize is a dramatic actress and Aeon doesn't do much dramatically, she pretty much walks around, looks stoically at the screen and fights people. She probably made Aeon more personable than most actresses, but that isn't really Aeon's character. Second, there is no way that this movie could live up to the original Mtv Series that was ground breaking animation when it came out. Third, there is no way the the original could have been converted to a full movie story line and still made a good movie, it just wasn't that type of a story. Aeon dies at the end of every segment and you couldn't have Charlize die multiple dies and still keep a cohesive plot. So all in all and admirable go but it just fell short.