Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I WANT A NEW DRUG, September 15, 2004
ABSOLON doesn't rely on flashy special effects nor big budget car chases. Unfortunately, it achieves only mild cult status as a B film. Christopher Lambert, trying hard to hide that French accent, is a noble hero, and Kelly Brook is a fetching love interest. Lou Diamond Phillips is an inept hitman, government agent; and Ron Perlman is the shadowy pharmaceutical magnate. Seems like the world in 2010 has been basically wiped out by a virus that came from man's destruction of the rain forests. Now all survivors must take a drug called Absolon daily in order to fight off the virus. When a doctor discovers a possible cure for the virus, he is killed and the hunt is on for Lambert, who has gotten involved.
The script is tangled and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it entertains; just don't expect a great movie. Just a passable one.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hamlet of the Future!!!!, January 15, 2008
No film tackles the ambiguities and tribulations of the human condition like Absolon. Through an examination of all of the great works of Christopher Lambert, this film rivals all others in its depth and meaning. More trancendent than Fortress, more epic than the Highlander series, this film captures one man's struggle for survival and quest for truth like no other. The film's greatest contribution to cinema is the settung: a distopian future; a previously unexplored and daring topic for both the genre and Christopher Lambert himself. In short, this film moves the spirit to ethereal hights of ecstacy; truly, not since Michelangelo has man created such art to stir the soul.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Absolon Corrupts, October 3, 2008
Absolon is a science fiction movie set in the future:
A mysterious AIDS-like virus has decimated the world
population. A cure was found such that a remnant was
saved. The cure is a drug called Absolon, and it must
be taken on a regular basis, or you die.
Some scientists discover a vaccine so that Absolon, in
theory, is no longer necessary. A detective investigating
the murder of one of these scientists discovers that he
has been chosen to carry the antitode until mass production
of the vaccine is made possible. A chase begins to stop
Detective Norman Scott from revealing the antitode to
others.
The new drug, Absolon, is treated like money, and the
company which manufactures it has become the new world
central bank. "The Company" does not want Absolon to
become obsolete for that would bring the new economy that
is founded upon Absolon, to an end.
How much Absolon you get depends on how long you work,
rather than how hard you work. (Pay Equity and Work Equity
are not the same concepts.) The price of Absolon injections
are measured in units of time. To wit, a homeless man asks
Norman Scott if he can spare some time. But the woman he is
with says to Norman, "Forget about him, he's already in stage
two" (of the disease). In the New Economy, if you don't have
"time" to spend, you don't get Absolon. And some who work
harder get paid the same as some who don't work as hard, but
work as long.
Young twenty-something females are coporate managers, overseers,
in this New Economy, which might make you wonder if only the
males are infected. But the fact that you don't see a middle-aged
female working, might make you wonder if females are unable to
afford Absolon, not being able to do something useful to purchase
Absolon with, after a certain age.
His girlfriend asks him why he looks sad whenever a phone rings.
He tells her he used to have a wife, but one day she walked out
the door and never came back. And everytime a phone rang he used
to wonder if it was her, but now, hearing a phone ring just makes
him sad. She infected him, and then left. He used to have a wife.
Perhaps she left him because she did not want him to see her die.
Or perhaps she did not want him to discover that females are immune.
The movie is special because it talks about AIDS, and the reality
that some people look upon others as disposable batteries,
"coppertops", to be used and thrown away. (I once read that early
in the AIDS crisis, some guys had to give up their houses in
exchange for experimental pills, in the hope of prolonging their
lives.) This film deals with issues of paranoia, betrayal, and
guilt, while asking the audience to believe in the power of love.
Who will keep the faith? Who will keep believing in "true love"?
In one scene, Detective Scott gives a boy a card with the image of
a superhero on it, telling him, "He shall return": The image on
the card may not look like Jesus, but religious art, even if it is
not accurate, speaks of a mystery, and of a hope. In the future,
it seems quality religious art is difficult to come by.
The action scenes in this movie are soo ridiculous as to appear
deliberately ridiculous. Perhaps the director is saying, Consider
how this is only plausible if you assume that Detective Norman Scott
is moving through time at a different rate than the other characters?
(To wit, in one scene he dodges bullets in an alley, while the
assassins are only a few feet away, and then manages to get into a
nearby SUV and drive away, down the same alley, while they are still
trying to shoot him.) Some people, it would seem, are able to do more
than others in a given "frame of time". This is a thinking person's
movie, and not for say fans of martial arts movies.
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