Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Seyneb Saleh

Directed by Duncan Jones

Netflix, available now

In the mid-21st Century a mute barman tracks down his missing girlfriend in a seedy Berlin underworld full of gangsters.

Duncan Jones’ sci-fi drama returns us to the world of Moon (there’s explicit references to Sam Rockwell’s characters and that Mooniverse) but for all its future noir trappings it never forgets the human story. Inevitably the production materials used to promote the film focus on the Blade Runner gloomy streets with neon signs and flying cars, but the story is not about the future tech, with the setting almost being irrelevant. In Netflix’s recent adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, the tech was everything – the ‘sleeves’, the ‘stacks’ the techno artillery – but in the case of Mute it’s primarily background dressing, with our protagonist’s weapons being his ability to draw and wield a baseball bat.

Alexander (True Blood) Skarsgård plays the lead, Leo, and because he cannot speak Skarsgård has to do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting with just his eyes. Possibly because he is of Amish origin, Leo has a gentle serenity about him, though there’s no indication that he practises his religion. The other two main players are vile ex-military surgeons Cactus Bill and Duck, played respectively by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux. These are two of the most vile creatures you’d want to meet, displaying traits of extreme violence and in the case of the latter a proclivity towards young children. Because their characters are so broad there’s no sense of empathy or hope for redemption and you’re just biding your time until they get what’s coming to them.

Leo’s search for his girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) takes him to familiar future noir settings – strip clubs, brothels, bars – where he meets the likes of Dominic Monaghan and Robert Sheehan in a Geisha kimono and basque respectively. I guess this is trying to channel the whole decadent Weimar cabaret Berlin scene, but unfortunately the future depiction of fusion sex robots has been a little overdone recently (Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Machine, Blade Runner 2049). Refreshingly, the future world isn’t just about dark, brooding streets, and we do find that daylight and the great outdoors still exist outside of the city.

Ultimately, and unfortunately, this boils down to a simple, vigilante revenge tale, with Leo taking the silent stranger to a showdown with the baddies. There’s a particularly gruesome death scene and the ending is a perhaps more upbeat than you’d anticipate, but as a movie the whole two-hour event is unsatisfying.

Verdict: Visually accomplished, albeit very familiar, this revenge drama doesn’t rely on, and as such squanders, its sci-fi setting to follow the hero’s search for his girlfriend. Mute is not a patch on Moon, and lacks the thrill of Source Code, and probably isn’t the film you’re looking for. 6/10

Nick Joy