Monster movies never adequately explore the trauma of kaiju attacks, particularly
for women and children. Instead, they are preoccupied with short-term issues
like evading giant stomps and fire-breath, right? If you really think about the
genre in such terms, please get help. Nevertheless, if you have, then this is the film for you. The angst and
anxiety of growing up in a time of monsters is fully explored in Brad Anderson’s
Worldbreaker, which opens tomorrow in theaters.
One
day, the Breakers just erupted from a hole in the Earth, due to us people and
our despoiling ways. The audience can’t miss that environmental message,
because Willa’s “Dad,” as he is simply known, makes the point over and over
through his “stories.” Subsequent Breakers manifest differently, including
arriving from space or rising out of the oceans, but it is still all our
collective fault—and don’t you dare forget it, you ruinous consumer, you!
Sometimes
we literally become our own worst enemies, because humans infected with Breaker
blood become zombie-like hive-mind Hybrids. You can kill a Breaker through
decapitation but a hybrid keeps fighting until you crush its brains.
Supposedly, “Kodiak,” the Breaker-fighting folk hero was the first to discover
these tactics. Willa loves to hear her Dad tell Kodiak stories, because they are
really stories and not Luddite sermons. They spend a good deal of time
together, because he was badly injured fighting Breakers, but he didn’t turn—at
least not yet.
In
fact, “Mom” has become the Breaker-soldier in the family. In general, women now
handle most of the fighting, because they are less likely to turn hybrid. However,
Mom will need Dad to protect Willa when their shelter is overrun by Breakers.
They have a family rally point on an uninhabited coastal island. However, Dad
can only truly keep Willa safe as long as she maintains survival protocols.
Weirdly,
Anderson and screenwriter Joshua Rollins take subject matter that traditionally
lends itself to big genre spectacle and remolded it into a moody chamber drama.
They only develop four characters to any real extent and two of them do not
even have proper names.
Every leftist guerilla organization always just turns out to be a drug-running
terrorist group. It is hard to think otherwise, especially when you find
yourself captured by one, like American research scientist Amber Chesborough. When
a “new” revolutionary group takes her hostage in Colombia, they quickly put her
to work in a drug lab owned and operated by the Venezuelan government.
Ordinarily, her chances for release would be minimal, but her husband and
brother are highly motivated special operators in creator Mark Boal’s Echo 3,
which premieres today on Apple TV+.
The
well-heeled Prince (indeed) and the white-trash Bambi just became brothers-in-law,
but they still argue heatedly and increasingly bitterly. It will only get
worse. Chesborough planned an expedition into the Colombian rain forest hoping
to find natural compounds that could counteract the chemical effects of addiction.
However, guerilla activity is the rise (real-life events have somewhat
outstripped Boal’s series, considering the terrorists are now in power). It is
a particularly fraught time for Chesborough to visit, since she may or may not
have had freelance ties to the CIA that she tried to keep secret, even from her
new husband. In retrospect, the military-grade tracking device he sewed into
her pack was also a bad idea.
Graciela’s
hipster terrorist gang is not about to release Chesborough anytime soon and the
U.S. State Department is determined to avoid conflict, like always. However,
the Colombian military is not wholly unsympathetic, even when Prince and Bambi
start going rogue.
Echo
3 has
a great premise (adapted from the Israeli series When Heroes Fly),
executed with a very high degree of military, political, and cultural accuracy—at
least based on the first five (out of ten) episodes provided for review. This
series gives viewers an excellent sense of boots-on-the-ground realities in
Venezuela and regions of Colombia. On the other hand, there are pacing issues,
including an inconveniently slow opener (helmed by Pablo Trapero) and an entire
episode devoted to one incident that easily could have been condensed to
fifteen minutes or so.
Nevertheless,
Echo 3 has some nifty scenes of urban warfare and commando-style action.
Boal, who wrote and produced Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, has
solid understanding of and affinity for characters like Bambi and Prince. Most
of their scenes ring true, while most non-political government officials, like
the Embassy Chief of Mission, are crisply professional rather than lazy
caricatures. Just wait till all the professionally over-sensitive-and-easily
offended, who were so unhinged over The Terminal List get a load of Echo
3.
The
series also has great sympathy for the average Colombians and Venezuelans who
are suffering under leftist terrorism, who are embodied by Violetta Cardiz, a dissident
Venezuelan journalist working in Colombia, whom the terrorists also target. Portrayed
with great subtlety by Martina Gusman, Cardiz’s perspective and traumatic
background really adds a lot to the series.
