Accion Mutante Review

Accion Mutante
In 2012, the world is a beautiful people filled mostly with beautiful people. In protest a group of rejects fight back, taking vengeance on sperm banks, bodybuilders, models, even going so far as taking the daughter of a wealthy wholemeal bread mogul hostage.

by Jack Yeovil |
Published on
Release Date:

01 Jan 1993

Running Time:

90 minutes

Certificate:

18

Original Title:

Accion Mutante

In 2012, healthy and beautiful people are under attack — sperm banks are blown up, aerobic classes mown down by gunfire, body-builders executed — and a terrorist cell known as Accion Mutante is claiming responsibility. Led by disfigured genius Ramon Yarritu (Resines), AM consists of cripples, retards, geeks, Siamese twins and hunchbacks. Angry at a world dominated by mineral water and diets, they kidnap Patricia (Feder), daughter of a wholemeal bread tycoon, and head off to a distant planet to collect a ransom. En voyage, however, Ramon finally gets fed up with his comrades' bungling and decides to feed them all to the cat.

Produced by Pedro Almodovar (Bad Education), this opens in delirious bad taste with the disadvantaged terrorists blundering through a pre-credits atrocity, a rap theme song and the kidnapping in good-humoured fashion, occasionally blowing away someone obnoxiously healthy. Sadly, this promise rapidly dissipates as the whole cast head for a desert planet and the Accion Mutante idea takes a back seat to Ramon's murderous activities. And by the big shoot-out finale, which pays off with an amusing chorus of dead miners singing the play-out song, it's become hard to tell to what extent it's all supposed to be funny.

There are some great characters — like the embittered Siamese twin who has to lug his inanely smiling dead brother around — and occasionally the cast leave off shouting at each other long enough to throw away a good joke or two, but writer-director Alex de la Iglesia is fatally unsure of his material. Officially a promising first film, this feels more like a disappointing second one.

Sharing a lot in common with Freaks, this film about a group of outsiders rejected because of their abnormalities, doesn't use disabled actors and is more interested in creating humour in their disfigurement than purely sympathising with them. It manages both but after a while the joke falls flat and the plot begins to wear thin.
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