Mark Reviews Movies: RUBIKON

Rubikon, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 30, 2022

Admirably, Rubikon revolves around the drama of moral, political, and personal conflicts between three characters trapped within a confined space. That place is a space station in the relatively near future of 2056, when climate change has all but devastated the planet. At some point, governments and countries have been eliminated in favor of giant corporations that control resources and borders, while fighting amongst themselves with private armies.

It's a fine enough vision of the future, although one might question how much upheaval apparently happens within a matter of 30 or so years. It's a vision that is both pessimistic in its haste, since those corporate governments are firmly established in those 30 years, and optimistic in the inherent belief that the consequences of the climate crisis will leave the planet habitable in any way.

The setup of this futuristic world is also more or less irrelevant to this story, which involves the apparent final steps of humanity's destruction, a miraculous scientific MacGuffin, and three people whose motives and principles are as flexible as the plot requires for its continuation. That's the problem of a narrative with such a narrow focus: The increased attention to smaller details means that everything has to be particularly consistent. Director Lena Lauritsch and Jessica Lind's screenplay, on the other hand, is inconsistent in just about every way—except in how it continues to alter characters and stakes in order to keep the plot going.

It begins with the arrival of Hannah (Julia Franz Richter), a soldier for one of those corporations, and Gavin (George Blagden), a chemist, arriving at the eponymous space station—a cooperative international effort that somehow still exists in this world, despite the movie's inherent cynicism about how greedy, aggressive, self-interested, and uncaring for human life those various corporations are. They're here to help continue the work of Dimitri (Mark Ivanir), who has developed an algae that's capable of providing self-sustained environment of breathable oxygen in a confined space. Obviously, this could be some solution to the planet's pollution, and more obviously, it'll guarantee that the trio left aboard the station won't have to worry about breathing when everything goes to hell on Earth.

Things do go to hell, in the form of a massive cloud of toxic fog that spreads across most of the globe. The results are the deaths of some narratively expendable crew members (including Dimitri's son, which gives the scientist a reason to be angry, guilty, and controlling every so often), the killing of all human life—or so it would seem—on Earth, and the stranding of the three to live out the rest of their lives on the station.

Gavin is saved from a suicide attempt by his crewmates, but after Dimitri explains that a minimum of three people is required to keep the algae going, the chemist undergoes a rather drastic emotional and psychological change that includes a romance with Hannah. As for the soldier, she dithers back and forth between self-preservation, keeping her crewmates alive, and looking at the bigger picture of humanity's survival with hope and apathy.

That last part becomes the key to the plot's moral dilemma when the station receives a transmission from a bunker filled with about 300 corporate bigwigs and their families. Obviously, the lives of hundreds mean more than just three, except when the characters decide that maybe they aren't, dependent upon whatever information someone has been hiding or whatever whims the characters experience at any given moment.

The basic premise here is sound from dramatic perspective, just as the station and views of that creeping cloud are convincingly portrayed by Lauristch and the filmmaker's design and effects teams. Indeed, there could be some real despair and cynicism in the various moral quandaries—which don't seem like ones, until one takes into account that maybe some of those 300 lives might not be worth saving—presented by the plot.

If Lauritsch and Lind had provided these characters with strong backbones of set moral beliefs and political principles, that conflict might have arisen naturally. Instead, Hannah, Gavin, and Dimitri each want to save those lives, potentially sacrificing their own, until some complication or previously hidden information arises to change each one's mind a couple times over (Hannah's shifts are the most transparent, since she also has to deal with an unexpected pregnancy, giving her yet another thing about which to vacillate).

Some big ideas exist within the story of Rubikon. Some much bigger flaws of narrative, drama, and characterization guarantee that those ideas don't amount to much, either.

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