'Aeon' OK, but full of flaws

AEON FLUX -- ** -- Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller; rated PG-13 (violence, sex); Carmike 12 and Ritz 15 Theaters; Century Theatres 16; Cinemark 24 at Jordan Landing; CinemaStar Gateway 8 Cinemas; Megaplex 12 at the Gateway; Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons.

OK, so how bad is it?

This is the question that has been obsessing the movie world ever since Paramount announced last week that its Charlize Theron Christmas movie, "Aeon Flux," would not be screened for critics, which is tantamount to admitting that the film is a giant stinkeroo.

And the surprising answer to the question is that it's not as bad as you might think. The futuristic thriller is overly familiar and never especially gripping -- and too somber and cerebral for the young action crowd -- but it looks terrific and is in no way an embarrassment.

Why they chose to hide the film from reviewers is a mystery. The studios routinely screen movies 10 times worse than this, and the film might even have gotten a small critical boost for its imaginative art direction and often innovative computer-generated effects.

Based on a cult-favorite MTV animated series, the film is set 400 years in the future after a plague has wiped out most of the Earth's population and what's left has been herded into a small, plush enclave ruled by a draconian dynasty.

Theron plays the title character, a sexy member of a rebel cell who's dispatched by her leader to sneak into the ruler's compound and assassinate him -- a mission that quickly goes bad and puts her on a collision course with the secret at the heart of her troubled society.

The movie has plenty of flaws, including a script that clearly needs a few more polishes, poor casting in many of the minor roles and some surprisingly clumsy direction of basic dialogue scenes by Karyn Kusama (whose previous movie is the 2000 art-house hit, "Girlfight").

There's also a basic silliness to the stylized martial-arts action scenes, though it never quite gets laughable, and it's no more absurd than, say, "House of Flying Daggers," which was the most critically gushed-over movie of 2004.

Theron's performance will win no Oscars, she's not at all hard to watch dashing through Andrew McAlpine's endlessly inventive production design.

"Aeon Flux" is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and sexual content. Running time: 93 minutes.

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