Plot: Two strangers meet to stop a conspiracy in a post-apocalyptic world where cities ride on wheels.

I was pretty excited for this one. The concept sounds like it could be well utilised on screen, and Peter Jackson was involved on the production side of things.


However, the general hype didn't seem to be that big and the reviews coming out from America were sub-par.


So with that in mind, I was still going in hopeful of a fun time at the very least.


It sets you up nicely for the world we're being introduced to, it has cool action set-piece to get us going and there was some nice comedic moments. But whilst I was having fun with it, the execution of the story and character development felt rather average by the end.
So for the rest of the film, I was thinking of what could have been for this film that has a lot of potential with such strong source material.


From the performance side, I think everyone did a satisfactory job but none were exceptional. Hera Hilmer did a pretty good job as the lead considering that she's never done anything this big. The strength of her character was very noticeable in her performance and I would happily see her in more films. It was great to see Robert Sheehan heavily involved as he is more known for British TV work. It's always fantastic to see Hugo Weaving. But sadly this was not a scene-stealing performance. There was nothing wrong with it. But you expect so much more from Weaving, as he always delivers. The only other performance I wanted to mention was Stephen Lang whose character and his story arch was the most compelling part of the film. If the rest of the film was as strong as this portion, then we could be seeing another fantasy franchise being created.


But despite all of the potential, I think this may the only one we'll get. I will give it a pass rating as the whole film is perfectly fine, I'm a sucker for the steampunk genre, the visual effects are very good, there is fun to be had, there's a sense of adventure and the action for the most part is rather thrilling.
But I think like with similar outcomes of Valerian and Jupiter Ascending, it was a missed opportunity to fully fledge.


Rating: 7/10