Mute
Mute is a messy disappointment from the director of Moon and Source Code
What do you get when you mix The Shape of Water, Altered Carbon and Blade Runner? Not Mute, that's for sure. Duncan Jones’s bewildering and convoluted sci-fi film is too messy to be derivative but not structured enough to be enjoyable.
A shame, for there is so much promise. Alexander Skarsgård plays the titular mute, Leo – an Amish bartender in Berlin 40 years from now. His girlfriend, Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), is missing. Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux’s shady AWOL US Army surgeons are somehow connected to her disappearance.
A mute Amish man living at the centre of a loud technological revolution? Another archetypal neo-noir story set in the future? A creepy, handlebar moustache’d Paul Rudd hurting people with a ten-inch blade? It’s a hell of a premise, but one that goes nowhere fast because Mute sets up these fascinating ideas in order to do nothing with them for two hours.
It is only about a day after Naadirah’s disappearance that anyone – viewer or character – realises she’s missing and at no point is it intriguing. Everything that occurs afterwards is so muddled and is handled with such insouciance, it’s as if Naadirah has just gone on a coffee run rather than gone missing.
Even the actors’ performances aren’t safe from Mute’s staggering messiness, though they try their best. Like Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water, Skarsgård finds depth in wide-eyes. His sad, sad peepers could give Shrek’s Puss in Boots a run for his money.
However, unlike Hawkins, Skarsgård is given almost nothing to work with. Leo’s Amish upbringing, the single most fascinating thing about him, is not explored. He and the putative love of his life share about five scenes together, while Rudd and Theroux’s comedic talents are wasted on uneven characters whose connection to the rest of the film becomes more tenuous by the minute.
At a certain point, Jones’s nonsensical two-hour film just becomes too much. After ridiculous red herrings, pointless side-plots and inconsistent characters you just give up on Mute and start watching it on mute instead.
Mute is streaming on Netflix