Movie Review: ‘Mute’
Netflix’s “Mute” is an unfortunate and problematic movie
Quick disclaimer: There are some spoilers in this review, if I’ve actually remembered the movie correctly.
Netflix’s “Mute” is an unfortunate and problematic movie. Unfortunate because it was conceived by Duncan Jones (“Moon” and “Source Code”),
a director whose work I’ve quite liked. Problematic because it’s the story of an Amish bartender, who just happens to have lost the use of voice in grisly childhood boating accident, in search of his missing girlfriend with a troubled past in a Blade Runner-esque future Berlin. Got all of that? Good. The movie tries to wrap these and other disparate ideas into some kind of enticing sci-fi cyberpunk dystopian veneer (right up my alley) and it ultimately fails to do so.
Leo (Alexander Skarsgård) and Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), co-workers at a black Russian mafioso-owned nightclub by the name of Foreign Dreams, are in love but neither really knows much about the other.
Leo, the Amish bartender, is the strong, silent, kid-friendly type but, given the right circumstances, the violent type as well. He’s unable to speak because the aforementioned boating accident and primarily communicates through written notes. Still voiceless or “Mute” if you will, because his mother forwent a technological cure for her son’s voice as it was in anathema to their Amish beliefs. His dating profile: he enjoys woodworking (what good Amish man doesn’t), life drawing, swimming (you would have thought he’d learned his lesson), and chugging water out of a dimpled beer mugs over his kitchen sink. You got me at that last one.
Naadirah is a mysterious, blue-hair waitress, who attracts unwanted attention from some of the nightclub’s patrons, and unfortunately is little more than a plot point to serve as a catalyst for Leo and the movie’s antagonist. She disappears for a bit then later shows back up at Leo’s apartment having regretted something she may have done. She’s in desperate need of some money for some reasons that we find out later in the movie. Leo then shows her the handcrafted wood-carved, dolphin-festooned bed that he’s been working on for the two of them. Aww, isn’t that sweet of him. But unfortunately, Leo wakes up the next morning and Naadirah has vanished.
During his desperate search for Needirah, Leo crosses paths with varied set of troublesome mobsters and general weirdos. None more so mobbed-up or weird as a pair of former American military doctors, Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux). Both of whom, for some reason, bear a striking resemblances to the characters Trapper John and Hawkeye respectively from Robert Altman’s 1972 film MASH. The two now trade in underground black market medical procedures with a specialty in torture.
Cactus Bill, a surly knife-wielding mustachioed man, is on the run from the
US military, attempting to buy his and his young daughter’s way out of Germany and back to the States. Duck, bottle cap glasses and cardigan enthusiast, has a steady non-mob related day job of making prosthetics, in addition to some unfortunate proclivities, and is more that content to stay in Berlin. What sort of connection might these two or one in particular have to Neerdirah’s disappearance? If you do some of your own math you’ll probably figure that out.
Once Leo seems to have gotten the big picture, he goes on a dolphin-carved bedpost toting rage, whacking away at anyone who gets in his path. In the end, while he may not be able to save his beloved Needirah, he might still be able to save someone else that was close to her heart. And then, just maybe, he finds his own voice along the way (eye roll). Spoiler: he’s able to talk by the end of the movie.
Given the convoluted premise of “Mute,” it seems like it would be ripe territory for sci-fi B-movie glory, but it’s all too self-serious, leading it to being totally forgettable. Its performances are alright given the circumstances but also well beneath the standards of the quality of the actors involved. While sharing some actual connective tissue with Jones’s debut effort “Moon,” a few noticeable nods here and there, it shares none of that movie’s charm, quality, or intimacy. For a movie this long in development — some sixteen years — you would have thought the final product would have been more polished and actualized.
