For What it's Worth

Sometime in the near future, due to nuclear fallout, the object of this film’s title becomes a rare and precious commodity, one even more valuable and life essential than the scarce petrol in the first three Mad Max films. From TV news clips we get the current state of affairs: Riots and chaos break out as the breathable life force runs out and the world slides into an apocalyptic purge. Those who survive (the educated and the well-off, as everyone else is told to hold tight) get put into stasis in subterranean facilities (ironically, old missile silos) where engineers (Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou) breathe the last kernels of air and keep a watchful eye over the remainder of humanity.

The dark ant-tunnel sets erected by director Christian Cantamessa and his crew call to mind the camped confines of the salvage ship in Alien, as does the theme of man being vulnerable and at the mercy of a computer-controlled environ. It’s also a place where authority is nonexistent and order is a tenuous concept from across time and space, open to interpretation.  Continue reading →