Saturday, June 14, 2014

The Human Race

In the land of the deaf, the one-legged man is king.

Or something.

A group of people (I think there are about 75) are randomly picked up from some random street corner in some random town and find themselves in a gated area. They each hear their own voice in their heads telling them to start running and follow the arrows. Also, make sure to not step on the grass because you will be killed. Don't try to escape because then you will be killed. Make sure you are not too slow because if someone overlaps you - yes, you guessed it - you will be killed.

We are supposed to care for a few of these people while others are not given any traits at all. We are not even sure how many there were to begin with, anyway, and most of these people we will not miss.

The film starts off with a very mean little twist. Pre-credits we are introduced to Veronica, who sits by her dying sister's bedside and later gets diagnosed with the same for of leukemia she lost the little girl to. But she won't let it bring her down and starts getting really active, running at night and all, and despite the initial bad prognosis she is actually on the way to recovery.

Then, when at the game (for it is a game), the first she (or anybody) does is....step on the grass. Apparently, she is not the main character after all.

Then....restart.

This time we see two soldiers in the desert. One is practically carrying the other, who has lost a leg. Jump to a few years later and one of them (he who is in one piece) is working with disabled kids (he knows sign language, which will come in handy later) while the other (the one-legged one) gets drunk and has a string of one night stands. Together, they end up in the game as well. Should we care for these two? As they are there are no more back stories coming we can take it as a sign that yes, yes we should.

We do briefly meet two runners, both deaf, as well.

So, the crowd starts moving and whenever someone gets killed, you own voice in your head will give you the current total of survivors. This is very exciting for the two deaf people, who hear anything for the first time.

What follows is running, some unity while the group might actually try to stick together to save an elderly man who simply is unable to run and is about to be overtaken. Of course, there will be a few loners that only look out for themselves. One of them (bad guy in yellow shirt) just runs off. Old guy's head explodes.

From then on it's anybody for themselves (more or less).

Towards the end, deaf boy is trying to get into deaf girl's pants, with everybody about to die and all, but she makes it very clear that he is in the friend zone. This causes a bad rift between the two, some unwanted fondling and a push onto the grass.

The last two people standing are the deaf girl and the guy with one leg. There is an initial idea for the two to not hurt each other, but the girl has obviously gone round the bend (and who wouldn't?) and pushes him onto the grass, as well. However, he manages to move back to safer ground by only walking on his crutches and never touching the grass with his one remaining leg. He comes back and kills her.

And then....

They had to go and ruin a perfectly average film by making the game the work of some alien race that is going through different species from different planets and having the survivors of each group then move on to the next contest, this time all winners against each other.

Just....no.

2/10

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