New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

And for his part, Neville's response is usually to lean out the window and spray the crowd with gunfire, indiscriminately killing several mutants in the process. I guess I just don't understand what everyone's up to here. Neville has an elaborate security apparatus set up in his apartment, but he seems to have no goals other than having a good time. It's hard to see where he gets his will to live. It's never really explained why The Family holds Neville responsible for everything, and spends so much time collecting fabric and building medieval siege engines in his front yard instead of you know, trying to find food. Everyone's motives are unclear, and the logic behind most of their actions is virtually nonexistent. It's frustrating enough trying to follow a movie that makes so little sense - what's worse is having to watch characters attempt solutions to problems that feel like they really shouldn't exist at all.

The story takes a turn about halfway through, when Neville runs into another survivor named Lisa (Rosalind Cash), who seems unaffected by the disease. Lisa turns out to have friends, and Neville develops an interest in using his medical knowledge to help them. But up to this point he's been the consummate narcissist, and it's easy to assume that his mind has been changed by the availability of casual sex.

Before the apocalypse, Neville was dedicated to finding a cure, but since then his humanity appears to have withered on the vine, and I guess I don't buy his character arc. Much was made at the time of the interracial kiss between Heston and Cash (a kiss that by today's standards, barely qualifies as physical contact), but if you ask me, Neville is just another in a long list of antagonists motivated to action only when a woman half his age is willing to take her pants off.

The Omega Man is filled with monologues, delivered by characters who don't always have convincing reasons for believing what they believe. And most of the actions taken by most of the characters fail to advance the plot so much as they merely keep it from collapsing altogether. By the time we arrive at the film's climactic ending, its impact is actually almost humorous. It's supposed to be a moment of redemption, but a single action does not a character arc make. This is a movie filled with lazy shortcuts that actually has the audacity to end on one. It's a shame because there's a fascinating story of human compassion and understanding underneath all that bluster. But like Matthias and his gang of cornball zealots, it's just not up for the light of day.

Continued:       1       2       3