Reviewd by: Harrison Cheung — If you want a good look at Andrew Garfield, the young Brit actor who will be playing Spiderman, check out THE SOCIAL NETWORK. If you want a long dull look, check out the sci-fi drama, NEVER LET ME GO.
With a pedigreed cast and crew that includes director Mark Romanek (ONE HOUR PHOTO), writer Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER), Andrew Garfield (THE SOCIAL NETWORK and the upcoming SPIDERMAN), Carey Mulligan (WALL STREET) and Keira Knightley (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) it’s amazing that NEVER LET ME GO can be so dull.
It’s a sci-fi theme that’s been explored before – check out the cult classic LOGAN’S RUN, Ethan Hawke in GATTACA or more recently, Ewan McGregor in THE ISLAND. Young school students find that they are actually clones being raised and harvested for their organs.
Carey Mulligan (left), Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield play clones reared for organ donation in “Never Let Me Go.’’ (Alex Bailey/Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Unlike the other movies, our teen clones in NEVER LET ME GO face their fate with quiet compliance – and that’s how the drama and life is sucked out of the film.
Carey Mulligan stars as a young girl, Kathy, who has a lifelong crush on Tommy (Andrew Garfield). But Tommy loves Ruth (Keira Knightley). So for their short lives, Kathy endures the misery of being unloved, and the rest of the clones seem rather matter-of-fact that they’ll be harvested. In this world, the clones have to give up 3 major organs.
Beautifully shot, NEVER LET ME GO crawls at an unbearable pace like some old Russian drama. Minutes will feel like hours as the story plods along. The ethics of cloning – the movie states – was answered years ago, so there’s not even that debate to make the movie interesting or to engage the audience. NEVER LET ME KNOW glumly declares, ‘I have seen the future, and the future is dull.’ How lucky for the talented cast that this film is behind them!
Henrick Vartanian
