Duncan Jones had been an interesting filmmaker to me, and not just because David Bowie (RIP) is his dad. Since he burst onto the scene with the stellar Moon, Jones has had my interest; Source Code, though not as good, was also a very interesting idea and a fun movie. I should have noticed the problems of Source Code though; Warcraft came next, which was ok but nothing special. Uh oh. Netflix then gave Jones the money for his passion project, Mute. This direct to DVD sci-fi piece on first glance looks like it could be fun, but the more time you spend with it, you realize the movie is aiming much higher and missing pretty badly.
Mute opens in near-future Berlin Leo (Alexander Skarsgard), an Amish mute (due to a terrifying accident) bartender is excited because his girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) is back in town for a while and bartending at his bar. The bar is run by Maxim (Gilbert Owuor), who is running seedy business out of the bar, including surgeons Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux). All of a sudden, Naadirah goes missing, placing Leo as the detective in a noir mystery, hoping to find his lost love which will take him through the seedy underbelly of Berlin’s nightlife scene.
There’s lots of little things wrong with Mute, which are subtly covered up by the talented Duncan Jones, but are still there if you pay a little attention. There’s a fun car chase involving a flying car and a normal car that showcases the cool Berlin Blade Runner like skyline. So when it ends, you’re a little giddy cause you saw something cool, but then you realize: this car was reported stolen, and it’s clearly expensive, so any bizarre behavior would be reported. Was there bizarre behavior? Yeah, a mute dude who never drove before hit something like 4 to 5 vehicles, pretty hard and causing some decent damage. So watching the next hour or so, not one cop had scoped out Leo’s place, or interrogated him, or shown up at the bar Leo works at. Every scene in Mute operates this way, with a cool setting or effect or conversation surrounded by clunky execution.
The central problem lies within Mute’s story, supposedly Duncan Jones’s decade long passion project. The separate stories of Leo’s search for Naadirah and Cactus Bill and Duck raising a little girl (Mia-Sophie and Lea-Marie Bastin) are clearly going to converge, but the intersection of their stories happens really late in the proceedings, meaning we are kept from a compelling stand off between the leads until the very end of the 2 hour movie. Also the tone of the Cactus Bill/Duck story doesn’t make any sense: it’s a little scary from the mob stuff, sinister from Duck’s weird inner life, funny when they’re out bowling, political with the war veteran US stuff, sweet when Bill is taking care of his daughter, and icky when he hangs out with her at a brothel. Seems like Duncan Jones was trying to keep the audience on edge with swerving because of the consistent Leo storyline, but it fails to generate any real tension or stakes because scene to scene no one knows what is going on. Alexander Skarsgard, Paul Rudd, and Justin Theroux give it their all, but the screenplay isn’t strong enough to deliver anything worthwhile than popcorn entertainment, which this movie doesn’t really deliver because of it’s dour Leo story.
All of Netflix’s success in the TV realm only highlights just how unsuccessful they are moviewise, with one exception…well maybe two. The streaming company really needs to stop investing in studio’s throwaway material and start investing in their own production company, and follow their TV model of giving talented directors and writers a chance to make their own quality films. And please, no more Adam Sandler, Netflix. That’s enough…