Rated: R | Running Time: 90 Minutes
From: Momentum Pictures
In Theaters, VOD and Digital EST on June 3, 2016
Watch it via: Amazon
I will say this about “Andron,” it has one of the longest plot developments of all time, especially for a movie that is about an hour and a half. The thing is that even if I understood the entire plot earlier, it wouldn’t have helped. I’ll help you out a bit with the story.
It’s the year 2154, and there is a group of people in this dark, warehouse looking place, and I mean dark. None of them remember much of anything, they aren’t really sure what to do, yet they just keep running around and doing weird stuff like helping this bald lady who is being protected by this dude who falls asleep, only he wakes up and creates havoc among the group.
Enter Alec Baldwin as Adam. As the movie plays out we learn that Adam is in control of the game and can manipulate it at will, which is kind of crappy especially since the general population gets to vote for the winner. Oh, did I forget to tell you the object of the game, the object that this group of people in the game really doesn’t know at the start, is to get out alive? However, there is a problem in Denmark, or at least in the labyrinth that doesn’t really seem like a labyrinth, and that is that the bald-headed dudette has somehow infiltrated and corrupted the game. This has Adam pretty upset.
Enter Danny Glover as The Chancellor. He is supposedly in charge of this world, and the game, but he isn’t happy because now that Adam has given the group their memories back, and the bald-headed dudette is trying to help everyone escape, part of our group has gone “off-grid” as it would be. Oh, did I forget to tell you that they are on camera so that the regular folk can see all of the action, or running around, as they are betting on them?
Finally, about an hour into this film, most of everything is explained, we learn why people are betting, how the people ended up as participants in the game, how the government is corrupt, and that Danny Glover must have taken some lessons at the James T Kirk school of over-acting. Some of the folks get out (of course someone had to), or did they?
And at the end of this hour and a half, hodgepodge of I’m not really sure, the film folks set up a sequel.
The thing is that “Andron” didn’t seem to know if it wanted to be a scary thriller, a social commentary, or an action film. Lots of people die, mostly by gunfire (really, 100+ years from now the automatic weapon is still in existence?), you get the feeling, I’m guessing, if you are a little younger, that they were trying to emulate “Hunger Games,” but me, being an old fart, all I kept thinking of was “Running Man” without the fun of Richard Dawson.
My wife bailed after 20 minutes of the movie to clean the house, which was good for me because I had the excuse of watching the movie instead of cleaning, but it was also bad for me because I just kept having to scratch my head wondering what the movie wanted to accomplish.
I suppose there are some folks out there who might appreciate this movie, but I’m not one of them, and it’s 1 1/2 stars from me. Bummer.
That’s it for this one! L8R!!