Zone 414: Review

3rd September 2021

David Carmichael (Guy Pearce) is a private detective that spends his days hunting down humanoid robots and killing them. He’s lost his wife and the world has never felt the same since, so he just gets on with the job and does what he’s told.

Then one day he’s contacted by Marlon Veidt (Travis Fimmel), the creator of the revolutionary humanoid robots who tells Carmichael that his daughter has gone missing and he needs him to track her down and bring her back. His only condition is that he contact Jane (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), a humanoid robot who was very close to his daughter.

So, despite their differences and views of the world, David and Jane set out to find the truth behind the disappearance of Veidt’s daughter – by going into Zone 414.

Zone 414 is a dark noir sci fi movie which heavily borrows its style and characterisations from Blade Runner. Pearce’s embittered private detective may as well be called Deckard for all that it’s worth and the film clearly doesn’t have any imagination beyond various sci fi the filmmakers have seen over the years. There is sadly nothing new to see here and everybody seems to know, giving their most basic and uninspired performances because they all know it doesn’t really matter.

There are attempts at giving a bit of tension and chemistry between Pearce and Lutz, but it all seems to be delivered in lazy exposition dumps rather than anything where the characters may ever feel something for each other.

Although Fimmel does give a completely unrecognisable performance in the movie, so he may get away with being in something like this and still be in tact on the other end. However, it’s only because the bad make up effects make him look distractingly like Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2.

It’s easy to say that actors are just going from project to project to make money so that they can afford to do things they enjoy better… and this is one of those cases. Audiences may very well enjoy the dark and brooding side of Guy Pearce and enjoy the aesthetic pulled from better material, but others may want to find something more original.

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