Captive State

Captive State

Starring John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Vera Farmiga

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

The Story:
Nine years after an alien race has taken over Earth, a small band of resistance still exists who vow to overthrow their alien overlords - despite the fact that it seems the world is much better for their arrival (crime is down, unemployment is at an all-time low, and people generally seem more positive, despite the fact that the divide between the rich and poor are greater than before).  Led by Rafe Drummond (Jonathan Majors), a group known as the Phoenix decide to plant a bomb at Chicago's Unity Rally at Soldier Field, and enlists a group of people to accomplish that, involving his younger brother Gabriel (Ashton Sanders) to find information.  All the while, William Mulligan (John Goodman) - a former detective who now works for the aliens as the Police Commander for Chicago - is hunting them down in hopes of preventing them from achieving their goal.

The Synopsis:
Last year there were two science fiction films I was very eager to see - "Upgrade," and "Kin," based off their stellar trailers.  While I was incredibly impressed by one ("Upgrade," one of my top ten films of the year), I was greatly disappointed in the other ("Kin"), and when the "Captive State" trailer came out, it became the first sci-fi film of 2019 I was very eager to see.  Sadly, it fell on the side of "Kin" for how much I liked it, which wasn't very much.

The story itself seemed intriguing: we usually see movies of alien invasions and people revolting against them, which is the basic premise here, but what drew me to this more than others is the idea that 1) the aliens have been running the show for nine years already, and 2) it seems that the world is sort of better off because of them.  They run the world (not girls, sorry Beyonce) from their floating ships (and also from underground bases that they have humans build for them, which doesn't make a lot of sense, but then again not a lot of this film did), and don't really seem too interested in ruling with iron fists - we hardly see the aliens at all, and they tend to govern from far away.  Since they started rule, unemployment has hit an all-time low, profits have increased, and crime is virtually non-existent, which all seem like good things - but of course it comes at a cost.  The line between rich and poor is wider than ever, and it's the poor who stage a revolt to combat these nasty alien overlords.

To do this, they combine their resources in Chicago in hopes of igniting a war with a single match - by blowing up the Unity Rally that the aliens are hosting at Soldier Field.  Throughout their planning, they're kept watch by the Police Commander who wants to stop them at any cost, and the majority of the film is this cat-and-mouse game between the two.  The trailer makes it seem like it's a non-stop action, but there's very little action to be had - or any sense of a cohesive story at that.

We're introduced to the main characters - brothers Gabriel and Rafe - who organizes the Phoenix uprising early on in the film, but the editing is so choppy and off-kilter that there's long stretches of time where we don't hear from either brother.  Instead, we have a whole middle act of the resistance trying to pull off their plan, and Gabriel isn't even seen for most of it.  Rafe himself blends in so well I didn't even notice he was still around - or it could be due to the terribly shot scenes at night where I could hardly see anything going on at all.  Then the final act tries to put all the puzzle pieces together, but clearly some (or most) pieces fell under the table and were never seen again.

While the film managed to keep my attention, it was only because I was expecting something to happen that never really did - or maybe it did, and that was the whole point of the film in the first place.  More than once, the theme of "strike a match, ignite a war" was mentioned, and maybe the film was just the match that was struck, but it seemed that there was a film before this one that was never made that explained what was happening, because there was so many plot holes and convoluted storylines it was hard to keep up.  Only John Goodman seemed to realize the complete and utter insanity of the film itself, and hams up his performance to make it at least tolerable and a bit memorable, but not by much.

The Summary:
While trying to tell a story of social injustice, "Captive State" managed instead to provide a nonsensical, convoluted story that's tonally all over the place and doesn't supply any real character development - but at least we got John Goodman.

The Score: C-