Review of Branded (2013) by Mark A — 07 Sep 2012

I really thought Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was going to be the strangest movie by a Russian filmmaker I was going to see this year.

I was wrong.

Comparable to They Live or Videodrome, this movie lacks the cheesy fun of the former or the disturbing imagery of the latter. Perhaps the best lesson the filmmakers could have learned from the Carpenter and Cronenberg is focus; this movie overdoses on too many ideas that do not always go together. The wackier conceits of the film; that our desires for consumer goods are some actually manifesting themselves into Pokemon like creatures that battle each other above our cities without our knowledge, are meshed with a rather tired and uninvolving relationship drama between Ed Stoppard as the gifted (or delusional) ad exec and Leelee Soebiski. There are also brief plot diversions skewing reality tv, spycraft and cow sacrifice of the an order unseen since the Old Testament. Soebiski is easily the best thing in the movie, doing her best to look stunning even when wearing a blue baggy poncho and white knee high socks. I never thought I'd find such a combination sexy, but dammit, she sells it. Of course when you're thinking about how something like that is sexy in the middle of the movie, you know the film is not quite engaging the audience as it should. The movie feels scattered with a cameo from Max Von Sydow that seems to be setting up for some kind of showdown between both masters of marketing, but comes to nothing. The Jeffery Tambor's part likewise seems to be heading in some direction that might lead to a conspiracy but instead its just wasted time, at best a setup for some bad comedy that interrupts a good love scene in the back of a car (again, Soebiski.) The Russian setting adds some character to the film, Russia being a place where you could imagine a conspiracy of fast-food corporations plotting to take over. Elements of the film are interesting but keep getting hamstrung by boring patches of drama, when the movie should be echoing Videodrome and launching full force, go-for-broke into the bizarre premise. The ending of the movie leaves you with no firm answers, aside from a final deceleration of a new era from the film's occasional narrator (and most offbeat element), a cow made out of stars that watches over the Earth. The movie is a bit of a mess, but it's point about the over-saturation of advertising in our lives is something that actually does speak to me personally. Its heart is in the right place, I'll say that, but the movie is just runs off the rails.

Soebeski is sexy though.