Mortal Engines is a thrilling, post-apocalyptic film that revolves around revenge and family, backed up by solid acting and crisp CGI.

After helming the classic The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, Peter Jackson is back making another adventurous, action-packed film called Mortal Engines — this time as producer. Directed by Christian Rivers, this film is adapted from Phillip Reeve’s novel Mortal Engines Quartet, with Mortal Engines being the first.

The story takes place hundreds of years after civilization was ended by an infamous event called the 60-minute war. In this post-apocalyptic world, cities are mobile. Resources are scarce and that makes predator cities hunt and devour smaller cities, London being the greatest predator of them all.

A young woman by the name of Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), fueled by her desire to avenge her mother, tries to stop London and its leader, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). Along the way, she joins forces with London outcast Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) and outlaw Anna Fang (Jihae).

The plot is captivating and complex as it occurs in the distant future and it does not only revolve around one conflict. There are other smaller conflicts as seen in several key characters’ back stories and personal issues.

What is more interesting is how the story subtly portrays today’s capitalistic society, highlighted by the quote, “the strong gets stronger and the poor gets weaker” in the beginning of the film. Moreover, it also subtly portrays colonialism, highlighted by big Western cities devouring smaller cities and the West’s attempt to conquer the East, which is referred to as the Shan Guo.

The interesting plot is complemented by the film’s great storytelling. The film opens with a bang, starting with an intense scene where London hunts down Salthook, a small city. This intro not only tells the audience how the world works in this post-apocalyptic setting, it is also a foretaste of what they can expect.

David vs Goliath: Anna Fang’s (Jihae) aircraft standing against London, the greatest predator city in the land.

The film does not disappoint as well-choreographed action scenes crank up the intensity.

However, it takes its time to introduce new characters and their stories, as well as introducing new issues to the audience. It is also slow to resolve these issues, building up a sense of suspense to keep the audience interested. Hence, at times when there are no intense action scenes, these well-paced story bits take their place instead.

This is especially true when revealing Hera’s past, Valentine’s evil plot and Shriek’s (Stephen Lang) true intentions, as the explanations are evenly spread throughout the film instead of just one scene.

However, with the film’s high intensity level and various conflicts, the audience might feel slightly overwhelmed.

The abundance of action scenes feels like the film does not want to give the audience room to breathe. The addition of information and new issues when others have not been resolved can discourage them from keeping up with the story.

This overabundance of issues being thrown around leads to some becoming shallow and insignificant. Some of the film’s more emotional moments suffer because of this, in which the impact of certain supposedly important scenes are dampened. One such example is a scene between Hester and Shriek, which ends up not as impactful as the film wanted it to be.

Personal grudge: Shriek (Stephen Lang) goes on a rampage to find Hester (Hera Hilmar).

Paying attention to the little things, the film also contains some humor — although not much.

The story is backed up by commendable performances from the cast. Although the characters in the film have predictable personalities, the actors play their parts well.

One notable performance is Weaving as the main antagonist. He embodies the diabolical antagonist archetype exceptionally well. Not that big of a surprise, as this is the umpteenth time that he has played a similar role, most notably as Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy and as Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger. Although his looks certainly helped him in portraying the villainous Valentine, ultimately it was his gestures that sealed the deal for him. So much so that they gave the impression that Reeve was specifically thinking of him when creating the character of Valentine.

Hilmar also put on a great performance in portraying the main protagonist Hester Shaw. While not an outstanding display of acting, she provides the important things that make the character believable – raw emotion.

As for Sheehan, he has really improved since his performance in The Mortal Instruments. He portrays the innocent, geeky and quirky Tom Natsworthy believably. Moreover, he delivers jokes that do not feel out of place, inviting laughter from the audience.

Other than the acting, the smooth CGI really helps to make the movie believable. As the story is set in the distant future, one of the film’s challenges is to immerse the audience into the story. There are many ways this could have gone wrong, but the film manages to not get caught up in such issues with its great usage of CGI.

All in all, Mortal Engines is a great film as the brilliant storytelling is supported by solid acting and clean CGI. And while the story can get a bit overwhelming and inconsequential at times, it will not be enough to damper the audience’s experience.

In the distant future: A glimpse of the horizon in the post-apocalyptic world.

— The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post

— Photos courtesy of Universal Studios

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Mortal Engines

Directed by Christian Rivers
Based on: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
Starring: Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide and Stephen Lang
Production company: Universal Pictures, Media Rights Capital and WingNut Films
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Running time: 128 minutes