28 Days Later

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. -- Charles C. Colton

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes. -- Cato the Elder

PROLOGUE

Anger is the root cause of majority evils. What if anger, peppered with severe rage is inbred into a virus? What will happen to humanity? What are the after effects of this virus? Like many said, what would happen if this deadly intoxicant of rage is inbred as a virus and spread to all humanity? Do you have an Idea? Well, “28 Days Later” is an attempt to find out a well-imagined scenario.

I happened to watch this movie after I heard a lot from my colleagues and was planning to watch a movie at the local Cineplex of “AMC 26 theatres”. Though I had quite a few choices, I decided to watch this movie. What is my opinion and analysis of this movie? Well, read on.

THE PLOT

A bunch of animal activists try to break into a Cambridge Research Lab to free a bunch of chimpanzees/gorillas held there for research. What they don’t know is that these gorillas are being experimented with a deadly virus for “rage”. This virus is spread through blood, saliva and through cuts. When an activist tries to release a monkey from its cage, flouting away the warning by the researcher, she is attacked by the gorilla and one thing leads to another.

Now “28 days later”, a man wakes up from his hospital bed. Tries to call for help, all he sees is emptiness. Jim, who was the patient, walks through the streets of London and slowly finds out that the entire city had been evacuated due to this deadly outbreak where the infected zombies tries to attack the uninfected and so on. There are very few uninfected in the city. He joins them and they try to reach a bunch of uninfected at Manchester. They visit Manchester after a plightful journey and join a bunch of soldiers. Here another sub-plot evolves, involving the survival of fittest philosophy and the rage and greed of a different kind.

What happens 28 days later? Try to watch it for yourselves.

MY ANALYSIS

My initial expression to the first half of the movie was. Wow!!!. It couldn’t be better. It was cinematic brilliance at its best. Peppered with a great share of humane bonding and sentiments, this movie really spooks you out for a great deal of the first half. Digitally picturized for the most part, the empty streets of London (It is said that the director filmed two or three minutes at a time, during early hours of weekdays and used so many tricks to keep people away!!- See trivia part). I have never seen London shown so clearly, yet so empty, anywhere else. All the while, this realistic picturization and the haunting music makes you attached to the edge of your seats. London really looked evacuated. A big applause is due to the director Danny Boyle, for the same.

The Human bonding at the times of trouble is shown beautifully with the way Jim and Selena bond with Hannah and her dad. The basic fabric of life takes the cream, given the fact about what is happening in the outside world. The world is full of infected zombies with rage. You can correlate them to any kind of chaos that is happening all across the globe. The director wildly succeeds in imbibing wonderful thoughts, which is almost a poem for most part.

Coming to the Scenes at the Army refuge, I felt that, this is where the weakness of the movie is shown in a large extent. The gory violence and to many unnecessary scenes were really unwarranted. In my opinion, the director spoiled all the fun one had all along with this longish, survival of the fittest scenes. The director succeeded in conveying a message that the real protectors need not be protectors after all. In the times of trouble, self-help is the best help. He indirectly sends a message that the governing folks could be so very ruthless and self-centered. Everyone just tries to fulfill his or her needs.

The poetic effect was over and I was kind of feeling when the movie is going to end, during the later half. While this movie had a lot of things to applaud about, it certainly had many flaws too. As one of the reviewers pointed out whilst not recommending, it is nice to see a movie send a message without gory details too.

The theme I liked was the human emotions and bonding during the troubled times. It is just truly awesome. This movie certainly is an eye-opener and you can correlate what was shown as zombies and virus in this movie to real-life characters too. Though at a baser level, the message sent out by this movie could be taken wrongly, it is certainly a cinematic masterpiece, albeit it’s shortcomings.

TECHNICALITIES

Directed by Danny Boyle :- Written by Alex Garland :- Music by Brian Eno & John Murphy :- Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle :-& Editing by Chris Gill

Cast

Cillian Murphy – Jim

Naomie Harris .... Selena

Noah Huntley .... Mark

Brendan Gleeson .... Frank

Megan Burns .... Hannah

Christopher Eccleston .... Major Henry West

BOTTOMLINE

If you are a person looking for a sci-fi/horror movie that haunts you while intriguing you with a question to ponder, this is the right movie. If you hate gory violence, this is not the one. If you want to see some cinematic masterpiece of a movie, this is the one.

All in all, “28 days later“ is a watch-it-once-at-least movie.

I hope you liked this review. Please shower in your comments.

KALIL

The greatest remedy for anger is delay. – Seneca