In time and histrionics, CLOUD ATLAS (MA) is off the map.
A screen writing directorial collaboration between Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings hosts a time travel turkey that resembles poor pantomime with the Dame played by Hugo Weaving.
Based on David Mitchell’s novel of the same name, CLOUD ATLAS spends its three hours screen time transversing time zones and stories in which Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess and Jim Broadbent morph into different characters that are somehow connected in a cosmic phantasmagoria.
Six or so stories snake their way through this serpentine mess that seeks to source several subgenres in a stew of a scenario that screams CULT.
We have the post-apocalyptic tale that bookends the one hundred and eighty minute odyssey where Tom Hanks plays a Robin Hood like character living in a future feudal forest terrorised by Hugh Grant’s barbarian warlord all done up in scary skeleton war paint.
We have the 19th century sea-faring voyage with noble epiphanies concerning the evils of slavery with Tom Hanks playing a dubious doctor with dramatic dentures.
We have the contemporary 1970s conspiracy thriller with crusading journalist Halle Berry teaming up with whistleblower Hanks, in copper coloured coif, to uncover the unscrupulous Hugh Grant.
We have a sci fi shoot em up with Matrix allusions with Doona Bae as a manufactured hostess, battery farmed by evil Hugh Grant, and freed by jumping Jim Sturgess in jujitsu gymnastics.
And there is a kind of homage to British luvvie comedy with Jim Broadbent incarcerated by his evil brother Hugh Grant in an old folk’s asylum run by a menacing nurse played by Hugo Weaving. Nurse Ratchet eat your heart out!
A meandering mess of a movie, as compulsively watchable as a mesmerising mongoose, the film also contains a severe warning to critics in a silly but sobering scene, so I’ll end my comments here.
© Richard Cotter
1st March, 2013
Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- CLOUD ATLAS, Tom Tykwer, Hugo Weaving, David Mitchell, Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Jum Sturgess, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter