Close to a decade after the year in which Blade Runner was set, that movie continues to be the gold standard for dystopian futures. That’s obvious from the silty-green murk and Asian signage of the broken-down metropolis where this ponderous sci-fi thriller kicks off; the last remnants of civilisation after an obscure catastrophe called the Event. With the Earth locked in a new dark age, outside the cities a noxious fog keeps everything shrouded in a permanent winter.
Lucky then that protagonist the Kid (Athena Park) has the comfiest-looking knitted snood this side of Topshop. She is forced to flee when her father, head of some important clan, is waylaid, asphyxiated and run through by masked marauders demanding to know her whereabouts. Lustrously bearded vassal Nobel (Josh Bainbridge), katana at the ready, is on hand to guide her into the badlands – and hopefully into the arms of an aunt (Lora Burke) she never knew existed.
With this cursory apocalypse and a sketchily depicted socio-economic landscape, co-writer and debut director James Anthony Usas struggles to drum up more than generic encounters for this roving duo. There’s a pitstop in a jerrybuilt garage/futuristic greasy spoon, a rescue mission chez yet more Mad Max rejects, and of course the obligatory cannibals. Even the through-line – the cybernetic tech developed by the Kid’s father, to which her aunt is instrumental – echoes Blade Runner’s preoccupation with identity without plumbing the same existential depths.
Radiating a sickly ambience, The Last Assassins is happily far more granular visually speaking. Usas’s art department background shows; he does a lot to crank up the cyberpunk dial with small amounts of set dressing such as a light installation on top of a substation, holographic displays on the dashboards of otherwise conventional cars, or red-filtered, Terminator-style security cam readouts. And the Kid’s final visions, invaded by a floating iridescent foetus, have a freewheeling psychedelic mania. Being good-looking at least lets us cruise through on mesmerised autopilot.
• The Last Assassins is available on digital platforms from 6 July.
