| Synopsis: In a dystopian future,
the terrorist group Mutant Action attempts the kidnapping of a famous bodybuilder,
slipping a plastic bag over their victim’s head. While the terrorists are arguing
over whether the bag should have holes in it, their victim dies…. The JQK TV crime
reporter (Jaime Blanch) gives an overview of the ten-year history of Mutant Action, a
group of disabled militants who wage war against the beautiful and healthy. The reporter
suggests that the kidnap attempt was linked to the imminent release from jail of Mutant
Action’s leader, Ramon Yarritu (Antonio Resines), who has half his face missing. The
members of Mutant Action, all dressed in evening clothes, collect Ramon when his sentence
ends. Returning to the group’s spaceship headquarters, Ramon finds everything in a
state of disrepair. Glancing at a large, incomplete artificial cake, Ramon orders his
subordinates to finish it while he goes to change his clothes. He also tells the
group’s mechanic, Handyman (Karra Elejalde), who lives in a body brace, to feed
"the cat", a monstrous creature that lives beneath the floor of the spaceship.
Ramon and his team take their cake to the colossal mansion where the wedding of wholemeal
bread heiress Patricia Orujo (Frederique Feder) is being held. The robotic guards will
only let two of the gang inside the compound. Siamese twins Alex (Alex Angulo) and Juan
(Saturnino Garcia) Abadis wheel the "cake" in. After a futile attempt to talk
the rest of the gang inside, Ramon orders M.A. (Alfonso Martinez), an enormous deaf-mute,
to blow the guards away. The gang pushes the cake through the throng of guests. Ramon
orders Alex and Juan to make the mechanical band play a particular song at the moment that
Patricia and her husband, Luis Maria de Ostolaza (Enrique San Francisco), are cutting the
cake. This will be the signal for M.A. to douse the lights, and for the Hunchback (Ion
Gavella), who is concealed in the cake, to seize Patricia. Unfortunately, when Alex and
Juan approach the jukebox, they find they have no money. As the pair argues, Patricia
plunges a knife into the cake. A scream of agony is heard, and Patricia stares in horror
at the bloody knife. Mortally wounded, the Hunchback bursts from the cake and opens fire
with a machine-gun, slaughtering most of the guests. M.A. knocks Luis unconscious, and
Ramon captures Patricia. The police arrive. Ramon sends M.A. to deal with them, but he is
shot dead. The Hunchback dies, but the rest of the gang escapes. Orujo (Fernando Guellen),
Patricia’s father, receives a video from Ramon, in which he is instructed to take the
one hundred million ransom to the Lost Mine Bar on the planet Axturias. Orujo swears
vengeance. In space, the terrorists escape detection by posing as transporters of frozen
seafood. Alex and Juan play cards with Handyman, betting their shares of the ten million
ransom. A fight breaks out when Handyman insists that the twins are due for only one
share, not two. Timebomb (Juan Viadas), a legless man who travels on a floating disc, and
who keeps explosives strapped to his body, turns on a news report of the kidnapping. The
gang members are shocked to learn that Ramon has demanded one hundred million, not ten, as
they were told. The gang confronts Ramon, who scoffs at them for believing what they hear
on TV. Sending the twins and Timebomb to various parts of the ship to do maintenance,
Ramon then dispatches Handyman by feeding him to "the cat". When the others,
hearing Handyman’s screams, rush to the control room, they find Ramon trying to
"rescue" his victim. As Handyman dies, Ramon turns to his remaining crew and
announces solemnly that there is a traitor in their midst…. Comments: Great premise, disappointing
execution…. For about half of its running time – the first half-hour, the final
fifteen minutes – this is an inventive and entertaining movie; but unfortunately,
between those bookends it completely loses its way. Set in the not-too-distant future, Accion
Mutante posits a world where the desire for physical perfection has spawned a ruling
class of the most wealthy and beautiful; where robots do most of the actual work while the
"real" people spend their time striving to join the elite; and where anyone not
meeting the extreme physical ideal is shunned and outcast. Rising up in opposition is the
terrorist group, Mutant Action, which consists wholly of the physically and mentally
disabled. Led by facially scarred Ramon Yarritu, the gang has made it their mission to
strike back against the worst manifestations of the ruling culture – namely, any
persons famous for their physique alone, health organisations, and semen banks. In a
special news report, we see some examples of the terrorists in action, including - in a
sequence guaranteed to warm the heart of any couch potato watching – the gunning down
of a TV aerobics team in the middle of a broadcast. Unfortunately, after Ramon is jailed
on weapons charges, the gang’s constant bungling (the bomb planted beneath a fashion
show goes off an hour after everyone has left the building) makes them the object of
laughter rather than terror. Collected from the gates of his prison by his loyal followers
(in an ice cream van, and to the strains of the theme from Mission: Impossible),
Ramon reveals his plan for rectifying the situation: the kidnapping of the heiress to the
Orujo wholemeal bread empire (!!) in the middle of her wedding. Infiltrating the reception
by posing as the pastry chefs responsible for the cake, the terrorists find themselves in
the midst of the cream of the society against which they are fighting – and if we
didn’t sympathise with them before, we do now! While the early part of Accion
Mutante is consistently audacious, funny and gross, the wedding sequence is simply
unforgettable (and more than anything else, feels influenced by the film’s producer,
Pedro Almodovar). The wedding guests turn out to be a writhing mass of "beautiful
people", male and female, and occasionally ambiguously gendered (in an imaginative
touch, it is these last – referred to scornfully by Ramon as "designer
poofters" – who earn the tribute of a kiss on the hand). In a moment of supreme
visual horror, the camera sweeps around the room – past the robotic minister that
presumably performed the ceremony - and gives the viewer a horribly clear look at the
guests: the makeup, the hair, the clothing, the surgically rendered body shapes. (It is
made quite clear here that the society’s struggle for physical perfection has had the
same effect that it does in the canine world – i.e. a concomitant loss of mental
ability….) And in the midst of this mob of made-to-order morons, all of whom dance
enthusiastically to idiotic pop music (retro-pop – you’ll recognise it!),
the vacuous, giggling Patricia Orujo and her equally asinine bridegroom prepare to cut
their cake. This should be the moment of the terrorists’ triumph, but again disaster
strikes. Waiting for the musical cue meant to precipitate his emergence from the cake, the
concealed Hunchback becomes an inadvertent victim when Patricia plunges in a knife while
Alex and Juan, the Siamese twins, are still trying to find change for the jukebox. As
Patricia screams in horror, the Hunchback lurches out of the cake and begins gunning down
the guests. Too late, the twins find the necessary coin, and as cheerful bubblegum music
rings out, a massacre ensues. The Hunchback dies of his stab wound, and the hulking M.A.
is shot by the police, but the rest of the gang escapes with their hostage to the
spaceship that doubles as their headquarters. Blasting off, the terrorists head for the
planet Axturias, where the ransom drop is to occur. And that, unfortunately, is where Accion
Mutante begins to fall apart. Having set up this fascinating premise, and so
skillfully created an entire society to act as backdrop to it, the film-makers simply
throw it all away.
Once on board the spaceship, Ramon sets about ridding
himself of the other members of the gang, for reasons that are never revealed. Was he
simply using his fellow outcasts all along? Did his time in jail alter his beliefs? Did
his gang’s incompetent bungling turn him against them? We never know – although
Ramon’s actions suggest the first alternative. The trouble starts when a television
news report reveals that the actual ransom figure is one hundred million, not the ten
million that Ramon told his followers. (In a hilarious moment, the figure $100,000,000
whirls around onscreen like the prize on a quiz show.) When the mutants venture to ask
Ramon about this discrepancy, he dismisses it, telling them that ten million is the
correct figure, and that the other is simply a piece of false information meant to sow
dissension amongst the kidnappers. Having for the moment soothed his followers’
suspicions, Ramon then begins disposing of them, one by one. The first to go is the
Handyman, fed headfirst to "the cat" and dying in a shower of gore and burped-up
body parts. As the twins and Timebomb arrive too late to help, Ramon informs them that
there is a traitor in the organisation. Bewildered by this revelation, the others set
themselves to discovering the guilty party (Alex having to reassure his twin that it
isn’t him). Ramon corners Timebomb in his laboratory and detonates the
explosives he wears strapped to his body. Shortly afterwards, Alex wakes to find himself
covered in blood, and discovers that his twin has been dispatched via a hatchet in the
forehead. Alex pulls a gun on Ramon but, hampered by his dead brother, loses his
advantage, and a violent fight ends with Ramon apparently killing Alex with a blow to the
head. During the struggle, the spaceship’s faulty brake line is severed, and the ship
crashes on the planet Axturias. Both Ramon and his hostage survive the impact, and must
walk endless miles across the desert to the rendezvous. Meanwhile, Alex, too, has
staggered from the wreck, and follows the pair torn between his determination to revenge
himself on the treacherous Ramon, and his feelings for Patricia, for whom he has conceived
a seemingly hopeless passion.
What humour is to be found in the next stretch of the film
centres about Alex and his travails. Collapsing in the middle of the desert, he eventually
comes to to find vultures picking at his increasingly pungent twin. Alex is rescued by a
blind miner (who demonstrates his skills in taxidermy on the unfortunate Juan) before
being ambushed by a whooping mob of psychotic miners, and having a close encounter with
the local Hangin’ Tree - although luckily, the miners choose to string up Juan rather
than Alex himself. Alex does finally escape this predicament, and covers the final leg of
his journey hampered not just by his dead brother, but by the Hangin’ Branch and a
length of rope as well. Meanwhile, Ramon and Patricia have been undergoing trials of their
own - none of which, I’m sad to say, is even remotely funny. The early stages of the
film establish Patricia as the very embodiment of the society that Mutant Action was
striking against. A closer look at the girl further reveals that she is a giggling,
motormouthed, airheaded bimbo. This, we gather, is supposed to excuse the escalating
torrent of abuse that she is subjected to over the course of the film. Our first look at
the girl at the kidnapper’s headquarters reveals her chained to a chair with her
mouth, not gagged, but stapled shut. (That this shot is the still most often
reproduced from the film is a worry in itself.) After being forced to watch the bloody
elimination of the crew, Patricia then suffers through Ramon’s attempts to
"clean her up" before her father sees her, having the staples very slowly
extracted, one by one. This has barely been completed before the spaceship crashes on
Axturias. Patricia is knocked out briefly, then regains consciousness to reveal that she
has developed a wholly inexplicable passion for her abductor. This, even Ramon finds
ridiculous. "Not Stockholm Syndrome! Not now!" he exclaims in disgust, as
Patricia tries to demonstrate her devotion to him by offering to help kill her father.
Determined to make the Lost Mine Bar in the minimum amount of time, Ramon starts the trek
across the desert, dragging Patricia along the ground by her hair. Tiring, he then insists
that the girl walk after him, their journey being broken only by Ramon stopping to punch
his hostage hard in the face every time he feels that she’s talking too much - which
is often. Needless to say, Patricia bounces back from each of these assaults more obsessed
with her abductor than ever. This section of the film reaches its nadir when the pair
falls into the hands of a trio of crazed, sex-starved miners, who proceed to tie Patricia
to a bed and gang rape her - an incident shrugged off by the film-makers and the victim
with equal casualness. The next thing we know, Patricia and Ramon have escaped, and are on
their way to the rendezvous. Just how this is managed we never exactly learn, although we
do know that it was facilitated by Patricia giving a ten year old boy the gift of her used
underpants....
Accion Mutante redeems itself somewhat
during the final section of the film, where it manages to regain at least part of the air
of anarchic black humour that infused the opening sequences. The Lost Mine Bar is the
scene of the ransom drop, and pretty much every character who is still standing converges
upon it, including ubiquitous crime reporter Jaime Blanch and his camera crew. In an
hysterical scene, Ramon and Orujo conduct their ransom negotiations from the opposite ends
of the bar, pausing between each statement to allow the cameraman and the boom mike guy to
scuttle into position. Unfortunately for Ramon, he learns that Orujo doesn’t want
Patricia back - and that he has every intention of committing suicide and taking everyone
at the Lost Mine with him. This final threat is forestalled by the arrival of the vengeful
Alex (Juan still in tow), and the film finishes pretty much as it began - with a
bloodbath. Despite this, Accion Mutante manages, most unexpectedly, to provide a
happy ending. Less unexpectedly, perhaps, it is a happy ending involving gunfire,
explosions, severed limbs, and an astronomical body count.
It is a great shame that Accion Mutante runs off
the rails so completely during its middle section, because in many ways it has a great
deal going for it. Everything about the film belies its comparatively low budget. In
particular, it looks fantastic, creating a believable grungy world for its mutants to
inhabit, and a hilariously repellent environment for its beautiful people, too. (My only
complaint is that some of the scenes were a little underlit, but this may have been my
print.) The special effects are also well executed. (The same team would later do Delicatessen
- it shows.) Up until the disposal of the mutants by their leader, this is a bloody,
funny, wildly imaginative exercise. However, the killing off of the disabled terrorists
leaves the film struggling to find a voice. Incredibly, it seems as if director Alex de la
Iglesia and co-writer Jorge Guerriaechevarria simply didn’t realise the potential of
the scenario they had devised – nor what effect it would have upon an audience. We
want to know more about these "mutants" and their battle against soulless
perfection; and about the workings of the society that created the two opposing forces.
However, the film-makers seem to have had no such interest in the world or the people that
they created. Although much of Accion Mutante seems informed by Peter
Jackson’s early work, and other films such as Brian Yuzna’s Society, what
struck me while watching it was how completely its premise could have been lifted from a
John Waters movie. But of course, if this had been a John Waters movie, it would
truly have been about the mutants - their banding together, their battle, and ultimately -
can we doubt it? - their victory! But no such sympathy for the dispossessed is present in Accion
Mutante. Instead, Alex de la Iglesia shows the same contempt for the mutants that his
ruling elite does, depicting them - with the possible exception of Alex - as a bunch of
hopelessly stupid, bungling incompetents, easily used, abused, and when convenient,
disposed of. (A propos, I was amused to note that Ramon keeps his motley crew in line by
using exactly the same tactics as those employed by Spencer Tracy in Pat And Mike.)
Once Mutant Action has been bloodily disbanded, we are left with a story that is
occasionally funny, frequently violent, and almost ceaselessly tasteless - but which
displays all too little of the satirical humour that underlies the opening sequences, and
which there serves to disarm many of the story’s uglier aspects. In the end, Accion
Mutante is a film suffering from an increasingly common complaint: it has no heart.
|
Director: Alex de
la Iglesia