Mute | MOVIE REVIEW

I gotta say, Meekus has come a long way since being an orange-mocha frappuccino-drinking male model, to be honest. I'm proud of the guy. I really am.

Mute was directed by Duncan Jones (Warcraft, Moon) - who also happens to be David Bowie's son - and stars Alexander Skarsgard, Paul Rudd, and Justin Theroux. It's also a sci-fi, cyberpunk, noir film, not too unlike Blade Runner - in fact, visually, it did remind me a lot of Blade Runner, but that's not so much a bad thing as it is kind of unavoidable when making cyberpunk anything.

I'm gonna keep it vague here, since I don't wanna spoil anything in case you were planning on catching it, but the plot revolves around Leo (played by Alexander Skarsgard), who is mute, and his quest to unravel a mystery.

It has nothing to do with orange mocha frappuccinos, unfortunately.

Ever since this project was announced, I'd been anticipating it. I like Duncan Jones quite a bit, and I liked Warcraft (I'm sorry I haven't seen Moon yet; I've been quite busy), so I was pretty interested to see what Mr. Jones does upon his return to Azeroth. I mean, a sci-fi, cyberpunk noir - no one makes shit like that anymore (I mean, unless you're Denis Villeneuve or the creators of Altered Carbon). I like Mr. Jones' visual sense, and I was really itching to find out what he would bring to the genre.

Suffice it to say, reviews haven't quite been too kind to this one.

Despite the review scores, I went into this with an open mind. Middling review scores don't usually stop me from appreciating certain movies, so I had no reservations going in. When it ended, I was pretty let down.

That isn't to say that there weren't things I liked in this movie. First of all, this movie looks really good. Like I said earlier, it did remind me a lot of Blade Runner, but I feel like it did enough things differently in order to set itself apart. A lot of the visual effects were great and future Berlin is, honestly, so beautiful. It's very pretty, and absolutely incredible to look at.

I mean, for a Netflix movie, this is pretty impressive.

The world felt very grimy and lived in, and everything looked so tangible and used. It wasn't a shiny or glamorous looking place, and I liked seeing that. It made the world feel a bit more real and believable to me. There were also a lot of practical elements in here, as well, so that was cool to see.

Another page this movie takes out of Blade Runner's book is having an awesome soundtrack. Clint Mansell - who worked on Moon (which has one of my favorite soundtracks ever) - scored the music in this one, and he did an amazing job. I liked the electronic feel to it, and a lot of it felt very industrial and foreboding, in many places. I love it when a movie's score has its own personality, and Mute's definitely has a big one. It's good stuff.

Alexander Skarsgard is also a fantastic actor.

I'd always thought he was a decent actor, but this movie showed me just how much range he has. I mean, he carries a lot of this movie, and he does so without saying anything. I'm not kidding you, he says next to zilch in this movie, and for him to carry something like this - of this scale - through just facial expressions and emotions was remarkable.

Paul Rudd was also great in the movie, and he put on a performance that I was not aware he was capable of. There was something just so off about him, but he conveyed it without overcooking the unhinged aspect of everything. Justin Theroux also complemented Rudd's performance nicely, and the two formed a pretty good tandem. Whenever they were onscreen together, it was always interesting.

They had pretty good chemistry, I'll give them that.

Dominic Monaghan also is in here, and his bit here was the most I've ever been entertained by him since The Lord of the Rings. 

However, like I mentioned earlier, the movie was a let-down for me. I'll be completely honest with you - at least two thirds of the movie were a mess. There was just so much clutter and the story was all over the place, and it was just difficult to follow.

To put things into perspective, watching Mute is like having your friend show you around a mall that is pretty okay to look at, but once you've gone past the wing with the high-end restaurants, there really isn't much there. The movie's plot feels like it's wandering all over the city and showing you all the interesting bits, but beyond that, it feels pretty aimless. As I was watching it, I was waiting for the story to pick up at some point. But, no, it just kept on going, and going.

I don't mind when a movie takes time to build up its mystery, but at the very least, a movie should make you, the viewer, feel as if you're getting somewhere. For a large portion of this movie, I didn't feel as if I was getting any closer to a conclusion. The clues were so few and far between that it just felt like a wild goose chase, and one that was going nowhere.

It aims pretty high but falls quite short.

As you would expect from these kinds of movies, there are twists and turns that the narrative takes - which I won't spoil for obvious reasons - that happen so suddenly, and without much buildup. It didn't give me much time to process what had just happened, and left me pretty confused - and not in a good way.

Some of the dialog in here is pretty clunky at times, too. People say things that I can't imagine other people say in real life, and some of the delivery feels very forced. There's also an over-abundance of the F-word, and at some point, it just starts to feel edgy. It was as if the movie was saying, "Hey look, we're a mature movie."

I mean, granted, I cuss here and there in real life, but when you cuss in every sentence you say, it just starts to sound obnoxious.

A lot of the acting in here felt either clumsy or just altogether unpolished. Besides Skarsgard, Rudd, and Theroux, I can't think of any other performance in here that blew me away, or at least made me feel something watching it.

Other than anger, at least.

Okay, I don't wanna be mean, but this f**king character (left), I could not stand one bit. He was the most unlikeable piece of shit you could meet. Ever. That isn't to say Robbie Sheehan's performance sucked (it was okay - although his line delivery seemed pretty stilted at time), but I just really couldn't bring find any redeeming qualities in his character, at all. I didn't know why his character didn't like Leo, and nothing he did on-screen made me appreciate him in the slightest.

I also couldn't quite figure out why some characters were doing the things they were doing. For example, Paul Rudd's character is explained to be under all sorts of pressure but I didn't feel any of that pressure as I was watching the movie. He was in a rush, and running from someone but he only ever runs into that someone once in the movie. Once.

I didn't understand why Justin Theroux was doing what he was doing, either. His motivations kinda flip-flop throughout the movie, and I didn't quite get why, at some points, he let Paul Rudd push him around the way he did.

Like I said, Leo is trying to solve a mystery, but I didn't get why the mystery had kicked off in the first place. Maybe it flew over my head, but it just wasn't cleared up at all by the time the movie ended.

Speaking of endings...

The ending dragged on for way too long, also. It kept going, and it kept going, and going, and it started to get cumbersome and feel like a chore. It just didn't work for me.

As far as pacing went, I didn't mind that it was slow, but what I hated was that it felt as if it wasn't going anywhere. There were way too many scenes that were devoted to world-building without contributing much to the overall narrative, and I feel like those could've been handled a lot better.

The movie gets a bit preachy at some points, too. There were some moral themes that the movie wanted to convey - and they were good morals, too - but the way they were expressed in the narrative felt as if the movie was beating me over the head. It was like it was yelling things at me that I already knew.

Guys, Mute was disappointing. Visually, it was impressive and incredibly beautiful, but its narrative was a mess and all over the place. It felt aimless, and was pretty boring a lot of the time, and, despite great performances from Justin Theroux, Alexander Skarsgard, and Paul Rudd, was a major let-down. In my book, it's gonna go down as a Sour Jar-Jar.

So, those were my thoughts on Mute. If you've seen it, too, I wanna know what you thought about it. Leave a comment below, let me know. And, as always, this has been Rafa. Stay classy.