Having just seen the late Bill Paxton in the big Hollywood blockbuster Aliens (1986), made just three years after this avant garde arthouse production, I was struck by how radically different the two films were. I also wondered if he was embarrassed by Taking Tiger Mountain, with all of its trippy sex scenes and full nudity, but regardless, I guess it just shows ya gotta start somewhere.
This film is meandering in plot but the main concept is that a young man (Paxton) is programmed to be an assassin following 730 cruel days of being manipulated with drugs and aversion therapy. He's sent out to kill the leader of a global sex slavery operation in a Welsh town called "Brendovery" (sounding a lot like Bend-over-y) where women know their place and are submissive to men. He struggles with his task in part because of his confusion over sexual orientation.
You see, part of the conditioning this young man went through shifted his interest to men and included sex reassignment surgery before his orientation and identity were restored. It's an unfortunate aspect of the film because it seemed in there to titillate or generate shock out of the "weirdness" of these things, and to lump transgender or homosexuality in with the depravity we see elsewhere. It was also preoccupied with needless sex scenes and didn't make all that much progress with the main story line, losing considerable focus along the way.
On the positive side, I loved all the commentary about the future United States that we hear from the narrated news - how it's a Christian Democratic government and televangelist (now Secretary of State) Jerry Falwell is leading state executions and a plan to return to apartheid policies, how out in Utah the "United Mormon Front" is battling the Mafia, and how the President of Kansas has just been assassinated. "Earlier this year, the province of New Jersey was pounded with several small scale tactical nuclear warheads as punishment, according to the church, for its moral negligence," we hear. Meanwhile, the country is mired in economic Depression and its policies are rendered impotent, leading to cannibalism in big cities and American "boat people" being turned away by some countries. These news bits include other countries and were easily my favorite part of the film.
The impression we get of the world of the future following its "Mega-wars" is suitably dark and the cinematography in Wales is often quite good, but unfortunately the story-telling and overall construction of the film is subpar. All dialogue being dubbed after filming and going for some kind of shock factor with all the nudity didn't help matters. There were some great concepts here but the film lacked a cohesive vision, making for a mediocre watch (and I don't recommend this one for family movie night).