Originally published: April, 24, 2009, on 1050ESPN.com (now ESPNNewYork.com) and Lundberg.me

Hundreds of years in the future, the wars of man will unearth an unholy relic that could spell the doom of the human race. At least that is according to the new Sci-Fi Action movie Mutant Chronicles.

The political boundaries of the world in Mutant Chronicles have merged over the centuries into four main industrial super powers, two in the east, one in central/western Europe, and the Americas. A thousand years before, an evil alien device that turned humans into nearly unstoppable humanoid zombie killing machines (say that five times fast) had crash-landed on the planet and only by the different peoples banding together was the machine banished far below the earth and sealed away.

As the four feuding super powers continue to struggle over control of the planet, the seal has been broken and only an elite force, composed of representatives from all over the world, can silence this ancient evil once again.

The movie stars Tom Jane as Major Mitch Hunter, one of the leaders of the group selected to attempt to infiltrate the abominable alien machine, and Ron Perlman as Brother Samuel, the head of the religious group entrusted to uphold the legacy of the original collective that sealed away the alien device.

I had a chance to catch up with Ron Perlman about this movie, several of his past roles, the future of the Hellboy series, and much, much more.


CLICK HERE – to listen to my interview with one of the greatest character actors out there, Ron Perlman.

I felt this movie had such great potential, but fell short in the end. It was like a combination of The Punisher and Resident Evil with even less writing and even more generic action sequences. The story is loosely based off an old-school pen and paper RPG (Role-Playing Game); like Dungeons and Dragons, but with Necro-Mutants and automatic rifles. Mutant Chronicles had the source material to deliver a solid action experience, but poor writing and character development left you wanting more from the experience.

The acting, at least, was solid from everyone involved. Tom Jane basically reprised his Punisher role in this as a solider-of-fortune so it wasn’t a stretch for him to succeed in it. Ron Perlman is one of the most underrated character actors out there and did a phenomenal job playing another great one to add to the long list he’s compiled over the years (some of which we spoke about in our interview above). The supporting cast did well in the few moments they were called on to rise up and take a scene including a short scene with John Malkovich as a political figure during the beginning of the Necro-Mutant invasion.

This isn’t a bad movie, but it isn’t a great one either. There were a lot of spots that dragged on with too many gaps in the plot, which is typical when taking a plot from an old-school RPG if you don’t take it upon yourself to fix these holes with additional writing. I walked away with seeing enough action and enough sci-fi, but I still needed something else from the plot to make it feel complete.

It also felt like the movie couldn’t decide if it was going to concentrate on the action, the sci-fi, or the zombie aspects a lot of the time and this tug-of-war keeps you from becoming totally immersed in the fantasy.

The movie is an hour and 51 minutes and you have to figure that if they could have tightened up the movie to somewhere around the hour and a half mark and wrote a couple more minutes of really concise dialogue then it might have flowed in a way that would have left a better feeling in my gut when I left the theatre.

Mutant Chronicles gets 2 out of 5 for Ron Perlman dominating his role as usual and some average action sequences.

-Ray Carsillo