Last Sentinel

 What a weird, disappointing mess this movie is. A well written, well acted post-apocalyptic psychological drama with enough talent both behind and in front of the cameras to make its glacial plot engaging... but one that steadily gets worse as it goes along, all the way to a piss-poor finale. A fucking waste.

 It's quickly clear that the science part of this science fiction movie is pure hokum, since bullshit is baked  right into its premise: at some point in the near-ish future (the movie takes place somewhen in the 2060s) human activity manages to screw up the earth so badly that there are massive increases in sea levels. So far, so good.

 But the film's projections are far worse than even the most pessimistic scientist's predictions; Going by an animated map during the film's title sequence, the seas in the world of Last Sentinel devour everything except two land masses - Greenland (which sort of makes sense) and the Malay peninsula (which doesn't).

 There is so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start. And we're not even past the credits yet.

 But... that's ok - can't really expect better sci fi out of a low budget direct-to-video film than we do out of a big hollywood production, right? And to be perfectly clear, what follows is a reasonably compelling suspense film that hops between several different subgenres. For a while.

 The two remaining lands are still at war, you see, despite having nearly half the planet separating them. And here's another high concept for you to savour: because of... reasons (something something killer storms) ships can only navigate between the two continents along a sort of narrow corridor. Just... roll with it, ok?

 Right in the middle of that corridor there sits an oil-derrick-like defensive platform that one of the sides has armed with a powerful nuke; Should the other side ever try to invade, the bomb is powerful enough to cause a tidal wave that will wash both countries away. Remember: roll with it.

 The station is manned by a skeleton crew of four people. You've got a flakey, ornery Irish engineer (Martin McCann), an earnest, bull-headed cook (Lucien Laviscount), a quietly competent comms engineer (Kate Bosworth) and their commanding officer, a career military man (the ubiquitous Thomas Kretschmann). By the time the movie starts they've already served out their full tour of two years  on the Sentinel- and an unexpected few extra months added to that, with no news of their belayed relief. They only have a small time window to communicate with command back home, but the messages are always 'no news'.

 As you can imagine, tempers are frayed. The four characters are well drawn and the actors playing them do a fine job, even if the situations that put them at loggerheads don't always make a lot of sense. Into this fragile equilibrium drifts an empty boat, Mary Celeste-like, which triggers all sorts of questions. From there the film pivots a couple of times; First into a mutiny tale, then to a cold-war style paranoid thriller.

 Director Tanel Toom does a good job of depicting life on the rickety platform and the harshness of the sea surrounding them.

 The platform itself is a great setting. although it'll probably be recognizable for most UK residents; The exteriors were shot at one of the Maunsell Sea Forts built during WW2 to guard the Thames estuary.

 It's the script that's the problem here. The moment to moment writing is mostly fine, and it often hits upon some great ideas - like a couple of the characters trying to decipher what a tea ball is, or another character reciting an Ikea-like company's mission statement as he gets ready to drown the world. I mean, there's some really good stuff in here. Unfortunately, the dodgy details and non-existent worldbuilding quickly add up to a point where things collapse under their own weight. It's the type of film that falls apart under any sort of scrutiny, and it's never even close to good enough to keep you from poking holes in some of its highly suspect plot developments as they happen.

 The less said of the ending - which requires both us, the viewers, and one of the characters to forgive and forget a bunch of cold-blooded murders - the better.

 It's a shame the story didn't just focus on the nuts and bolts of its well-observed setting, or the character conflicts that erupt on board; Trimmed down a bit (this movie seriously did not need to be nearly two hours long), it could have been a very decent potboiler.

 But instead, it sacrifices its workmanlike genre charms to deliver a cack-handed parable on the folly of mutually assured destruction.