I am quite surprised, astounded even, that this movie has not received better ratings. It holds a meagre 5.5 at IMDb. Rotten Tomatoe’s ratings are, as usual, pure nonsense with a 10% rating and a big rotten icon. Personally I think this is much undeserved. Yes the movie is a bit silly at times and yes it does not take a genius to figure out roughly what is about to happen nor what has happened in the “mysterious” past.

Still the movie is visually stunning. I would not say that this is a special effects movie in the traditional sense. There are no insane outbursts of explosions, no car chases, no space fights. However, the scenery is quite good and the martial arts stunts are really really good. Maybe I am biased by the fact that I am a male and the main character happens to be a woman in (very) tight suits but to me many scenes where simply visual poetry. There is an especially noteworthy scene where Aeon and a colleague (who have hands instead of feet by the way) are traversing a “garden of death” in order to get to their target. The whole setup is fairly ludicrous. I mean, in an advanced, highly technological, society who would resort to so bizarre means of protecting their main base of operations? Regardless of that, the sequence is just so cool and visually pleasing.

The first two thirds of the movie is probably the best. In the last third it goes a bit overboard with pretty ludicrous gun fights which pretty much defies any logic, science fiction or not. If you have seen old Western movies where the good guy just walks down the street against a hundred “baddies” who all constantly misses him as he, on the other hand, blasts them just by pointing his gun in the general direction…well then you get the picture.

Charlize Theron was doing a quite good job of portraying Aeon Flux but my favourite actor was really Marton Csokas as Trevor Goodchild. His mostly calm yet quite imposing appearance was very enjoyable to watch. I had more difficulties with Jonny Lee Miller in the bad guy role. I felt that he was a bit bland but then I am watching Elementary on Netflix right now and there he is a so much more dynamic and impressive character.

Anyway, if you are a science fiction fan, do watch this movie. It is much better than the ratings give it credit for as far as I am concerned.