Gene Generation

It had some interesting visual elements. Few and far between, especially buried under a combination of Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Dungeons and Dragons ripoffs. But it had some interesting visual elements.

The above is the only praise I can imagine for The Gene Generation. I have been following the progress of this film for a few years (has it been so long?) now, ever since I watched a trailer for it and was fascinated by the cyberpunk feel of it. The premise is really kind of awesome: there is a society in which one's worth is measured by the value of one's genes (a bit like Gattaca, but what's original these days?). There is a generation of criminals called "DNA hackers" who can alter a person's genes. There is, in turn, a group of assassins whose job it is to kill these DNA hackers because of the threat they represent to the delicate balance of society.

I found this quote about the film on another website: "In the dark decadent world of our future, Mankind has found themselves close to the extinction with the last city on Earth. Forced to implement a controversial Natural Selection process, the government built a wall surrounding the last city named Olympia. By a careful selection process using our genes and DNA, the Kalafkan Government chose only the best and most promising to survive the destruction of Olympia, before building a new city where it once was. This process led to a crime known as DNA Hacking, where people steal genes and DNA in hopes of entering Demeter. The government started hiring assassins, to take out and kill these hackers who have polluted the system. In exchange, the Assassins are granted entry to Demeter. Michelle (Bai Ling) is one of those Assassins. Forced to render her services to the government by any means necessary, Michelle can only hope that death wouldn’t take her soul down like Olympia would. The Gene Generation is a science fiction movie about romance, revenge and redemption" source

Holy shit, I say to myself. This sounds like a damn good movie. Apart from that incomprehensible line about death taking her soul down. That's a warning sign. ((Edit: And I also noticed later: how can the government implement a "Natural Selection" process? If the government is doing it, how is it natural? Isn't that the exact opposite of natural? Like this movie is the opposite of good?))

The first problem is what the film means by "altering genes." When I read the synopsis, I assumed that altering one's genes would, for instance, change eye color, hair color, possibly some physical features, depending on how implausible the show decided to be about the capacity of a device the size of a person's hand that jabs needles into your arm. I was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong like losing my glasses and mistaking an angry Doberman that's just been kicked in the nuts for kindly aunt Gretchen whose only happiness in life is a kiss on the cheek.

As it turns out, changing someone's genes can, in fact, do one of only two things in this film. The first is to close up wounds and heal disease (something shown in the show's intro and only mentioned later, never to play a part again). The second is to make a person sprout a mass of tentacles, writhe around, and die.

Re-read that last sentence. I should probably stop writing right there and let you fill in the rest of the movie for yourself. It probably wouldn't be far off the mark, and certainly won't be much worse than what I had to endure. The suck is endemic in this movie, like it was shot in Sucknicolor. There's a large middle-aged villain with long blonde hair and a deep voice; I'm convinced I've seen this exact character in another movie, possibly several others. There's a goateed mafia boss with a comically incompetent but seemingly limitless supply of leather-clad goons who spends most of the movie bitching about people not taking him seriously enough. There's a bunch of midgets wearing leather who show up just to have midgets wearing leather in the movie. Oh, hell. I'm sick of even thinking about this movie. Let's move on.

Bai Ling appears in a different outfit in every scene, and I have a sneaking suspicion the film's entire raison d'etre is for the producer/director to see her in these various skimpy leathery getups (not to mention out of them: there are two random shower scenes and an almost equally random sex scene). She wears so many different scandalous outfits, in fact, that in one scene where a character actually gives her clothes and says, "I brought you some clothes," I just about did myself in laughing. If there's one thing this chick has in abundance, it's clothes, although she appears to be hard up for cash in every other way.

She has a brother who is constantly getting into trouble for gambling and getting involved in crime. At one point, the mob boss I mentioned above pees on him. I stress, for reasons that will soon be apparent: he got peed on. Later in the film, he complains about having shit in his hair and smelling like shit. Another character comments that he smells like shit. Later, the mob boss laughs about having shat on this character. I'm not sure whether nobody on the set knows the basic but fundamental difference between the two bodily wastes, or whether they changed the one scene without bothering to change every bit of dialogue referring to it.

Speaking of bad changes: at one point, a character gets thrown through a window. I suppose they couldn't find a cheap graphics program that would simulate cracking glass and movement at the same time: the movie freezes for several seconds while cracks spread across the glass, the guy suspended in mid-air, and then the guy falls through. I was flabbergasted. In another part, during a hastily-cut fight scene, a still frame is shown for a full second. A small nitpick, perhaps; I guess nobody caught that nothing was happening in that clip. Was this thing edited in iMovie? The 3D effects are laughable, including 1990's style fire effects and unconvincing but repetitive shots of the city with a flying ship circling overhead. Oh, and apparently, in the future, cities exist in stone basins flanked by huge walls. And those stone walls have giant demons carved in them. Yeah.

But I've saved the worst for last. Faye Dunaway inexplicably appears in this movie... for about one minute. She gets a couple of lines, then suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves "her" a hanging torso prop covered in CG tentacles for the rest of the movie, never once moving from one tiny but oft-reused set. Her voice is also mushy, which I assume is because she got one look at the movie, called her agent, and finished the rest of her contract recording her lines over the phone from as far from the set as she could get.

Now, there's some leeway I could give this movie. It's apparently based on a comic, but since I have no knowledge or interest in it, I'll leave it at that. Also, the concept of "hacking" one's own genes is interesting. This movie, though? Come on.

Final Word: This film might have been just kind of bad with some redeeming qualities if it weren't for the tentacles, which feel like an afterthought added in post to spice things up. Cut out the writhing tentacles on the gene-altered people and just let them flop around and die instead; maybe their eyes go all black or something to show they're afflicted. Imagine watching a tender death scene where the main character watches the man she loves die... as his tentacles flop around. Mmmhmm. That's one of the last scenes of the movie.