Absolon 2003 Horror Movie Review

Absolon is a science fiction movie set in the future:

A mysterious AIDS-like virus has decimated the world

population.  A cure was found such that a remnant was

saved.  The cure is a drug called Absolon, and it must

be taken on a regular basis, or you die.



Some scientists discover a vaccine so that Absolon, in

theory, is no longer necessary.  A detective investigating

the murder of one of these scientists discovers that he

has been chosen to carry the antitode until mass production

of the vaccine is made possible.  A chase begins to stop

Detective Norman Scott from revealing the antitode to

others.



The new drug, Absolon, is treated like money, and the

company which manufactures it has become the new world

central bank.  “The Company” does not want Absolon to

become obsolete for that would bring the new economy that

is founded upon Absolon, to an end.



How much Absolon you get depends on how long you work,

rather than how hard you work.  (Pay Equity and Work Equity

are not the same concepts.)  The price of Absolon injections

are measured in units of time.  To wit, a homeless man asks

Norman Scott if he can spare some time.  But the woman he is

with says to Norman, “Forget about him, he’s already in stage

two” (of the disease).  In the New Economy, if you don’t have

“time” to spend, you don’t get Absolon.  And some who work

harder get paid the same as some who don’t work as hard, but

work as long.



Young twenty-something females are coporate managers, overseers,

in this New Economy, which might make you wonder if only the

males are infected.  But the fact that you don’t see a middle-aged

female working, might make you wonder if females are unable to

afford Absolon, not being able to do something useful to purchase

Absolon with, after a certain age.



His girlfriend asks him why he looks sad whenever a phone rings.

He tells her he used to have a wife, but one day she walked out

the door and never came back.  And everytime a phone rang he used

to wonder if it was her, but now, hearing a phone ring just makes

him sad.  She infected him, and then left.  He used to have a wife.

Perhaps she left him because she did not want him to see her die.

Or perhaps she did not want him to discover that females are immune.



The movie is special because it talks about AIDS, and the reality

that some people look upon others as disposable batteries,

“coppertops”, to be used and thrown away.  (I once read that early

in the AIDS crisis, some guys had to give up their houses in

exchange for experimental pills, in the hope of prolonging their

lives.)  This film deals with issues of paranoia, betrayal, and

guilt, while asking the audience to believe in the power of love. 

Who will keep the faith?  Who will keep believing in “true love”? 

In one scene, Detective Scott gives a boy a card with the image of

a superhero on it, telling him, “He shall return”:  The image on

the card may not look like Jesus, but religious art, even if it is

not accurate, speaks of a mystery, and of a hope.  In the future,

it seems quality religious art is difficult to come by.



The action scenes in this movie are soo ridiculous as to appear

deliberately ridiculous.  Perhaps the director is saying, Consider

how this is only plausible if you assume that Detective Norman Scott

is moving through time at a different rate than the other characters? 

(To wit, in one scene he dodges bullets in an alley, while the

assassins are only a few feet away, and then manages to get into a

nearby SUV and drive away, down the same alley, while they are still

trying to shoot him.)  Some people, it would seem, are able to do more

than others in a given “frame of time”.  This is a thinking person’s

movie, and not for say fans of martial arts movies.