I don’t write a lot of movie reviews, because my movies fall into three categories: Classics, like The Wild Bunch, The English Patient, High Noon, Calito’s Way and so forth. Exploitation/Bizarre, such as Salon Kitty, Salo, El Topo, The Killer, The Tin Drum, Caligula and items laced with subtitles and softcore (and sometimes hardcore) erotica or gruesome violence. And of course, Cheesy, meaning poor special effects, bad scripts and few redeeming talents, such as The Green Slime, ReAnimator, Dawn of the Dead, Conan the Barbarian, The Land that Time Forgot and so forth.
Despite the categorization, I always enjoy all these movies, and try diversifying myself with every genre available, such as action (The Dark Knight, Aliens), comedy (The Hangover, Blazing Saddles) and a foreign movies (Let the Right One In, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) to make sure I sample everything and am honest as possible. After all, a good movie should take you on a trip, emotionally, sensually, and mentally, allowing you to feel or be someone, something or somewhere else within the confines of your seat.
Our hero must make a decision, and live with it, and the movie/script can’t be so bleak as to leave you wishing you’d never seen the damned thing. And, a good movie, even one as bleak as something like Goodfellas, Scarface, or even Pretty in Pink, has to be able to take you to some redemption; someone needs to get the girl, walk off into the sunset, rescue their loved ones, make the most noble sacrifice for the welfare and future of the world, or escape all oppression and live happily ever after.
That’s time you’ll never get back, ever.
That being said, this is a SPOILER ALERT. If you have even the mildest interest in seeing this movie, do NOT read my review.
I like dogs. And I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, watching for the “New World Order” or “Zombie Apocalypse”, either of which could occur. Don’t forget, at my age, I was watching to the sky for the twilight’s last gleaming being a part of the old Cold War ideals, leading us to believe we could survive a nuclear war. Whoosh, then comes the Day After, just like the name of the movie. Now I think our end will occur politically or environmentally, not at our own hand.
Downstream takes place after some end-of-the-world scenario plays out. A young boy witnesses the brutal killing of his father and the rape and killing of his mother; his father (not surprisingly) is a leading scientist trying to convince the world of their need to change to more environmentally friendly fuels before the world’s resources run out. Some thugs, recently deputized as law men, come to collect whatever fuels he may be working on. At this moment Dad is working on a modified Jeep that can run on any kind of fuel. So … Dad resist, and gets killed outright; the asshole thugs attack mom, who’s completely unarmed (Hasn’t she heard of womens’ lib?) and defenseless, and thus brutalized and killed. The boy (with his puppy) sees all this happen, and grabs a small backpack and the dog and drives off in dad’s modified Jeep.
(Hole 01 – this is all seen in flashbacks, as the story jumps back & forth throughout his memories, sometimes a little unclear of having making me wonder, why didn’t the asshole deputies ransack the barn where the Jeep was and take it? Maybe the little boy’s a genius and was able to have it running well.)
The little boy grows into a young man, and the puppy becomes an adorable small dog with short legs & a long body. The boy carried a huge revolver sans ammo, an iPod, and an SD card/flash drive of (what are alluded to) family photos around his neck. Moreover, apparently, the world has a shortage of many things: food/meat (meaning animals), fuel and ammunition, and oddly enough, women. Meat is being made of humans or with that allusion as there are no cattle, chickens, or other farm animals anywhere. The Boy is the only one with a dog throughout the movie, and that has a sad ending too. He escapes these ruffians in a emptied garage, and kicks down a stack of old magazines that have his fathers’ political nemesis, and possibly, the man who sent the evil deputies.
Underscoring all this is the idea of there being a paradise called Plutopia, where everything runs on cold-fusion, meaning it’s not using any resources. He finds a brochure that tells about it, and it becomes part of his reason for existence and continuing.
In a town he sees a girl being led by a pimp (with a fuzzy suit and zebra-striped hat) and she catches his eye. After he takes a leak, he finds that she’s being attacked so he rescues her, and thus we find a freeze-frame shot of his expressed anger: mouth open, subject attacked, and him victorious. Scary, really. So now he has the girl, and takes her to a slave trader, who brands her, tries to rape her, and all this was a misleading to steal food and actually keep her safe.
(Hole 02 – If he’s strong enough to knock out a guard, he’s strong enough to kill him by breaking his neck, steal his weapons and clothing and take whenever he wishes very stealthily. I mean, now’s a time for ninja skills.)
He steals the woman, the food, but no weapons, no fuel and reiterates to her this surrender was just a ruse. She tries running off but refuses but he convinces her to come back with him to a sanctuary where there is fresh food and calm refuge. Elder Daniel (played by Lenny Von Dohlen) gives them space and calm; Sarah, the girl, can’t stay as she’s coughing up blood, another allusion to disease since there isn’t a way to diagnose or treat it, and more than likely, it’s fatal. Along with the harboring of Wes (the boy) and Sarah (the girl) there are others such as a madman named Eddie, played amazingly by character actor Billy Drago.
Sarah escapes on an ATV, and Wes finds her later on, as do a group of soldiers, heavily armed, and ready for anything. They’re stopped, checked, and found by the slave-trader after he kills all the people who gave them refuge the night before. The soldiers are all killed, and the slave-trader is run down in a final savage duel between his Jeep and the slave-trader’s anger/frustration.
(Hole 03 – Everyone’s dead & there are 2 vehicles; why not load up on weapons, functional or not, ammo, clothing, and fuel, and anything else of use in the vehicles instead of howling into the wind?)
As Wes & Sarah resume their journey, they find a café in the middle of nowhere, and are given meat for dinner. The owner, a man who looks like an evil version of Chef Boyardee, is calling for a payment for the meal; and refuses to allow the dog in the café. Sarah offers herself, and Wes investigates, finding a machine similar to the one running the Jeep, using human blood as fuel. He (or Sarah, it’s a little twisted as to whether it’s a dream/fantasy or it actually occurred) kills the owner, butchering him in his own kitchen, and they depart. They park, and Sarah rest, and he talks to his beloved dog, Lugosi. He tells the dog he has to make a decision and he can’t look back once he makes his choice.
Sarah sleeps soundly, dreaming of her husband who left her trying to find a better life before she became human currency, and feels him with her making love to her. Actually she awakes to find Wes riding her, either trying to please her or replace the ghost of her missing husband. And she lets him continue, until they fall asleep. When she arises, she calls for the dog, and learns that he killed it for a meal for her, and fuel for the jeep. Sadly, Sarah begins having a coughing fit, and Wes tries racing her to their Plutopia, but instead stop, and she offers him her body, her blood, so he can continue his journey.
(THAT’S what fuckin’ killed it for me; he butchered his little dog for nothing really. Also, if you know the Jeep can run on blood, why not empty the damned corpses in the desert and the owner at the café kitchen?)
Sarah dies, and he buries her, draping a cross on her grave, tracing the body beneath into the sand, and walking, then climbing a small mountain to find Plutopia actually exist. But, he’s shot in the head by a sentry robot similar to ED 209 from RoboCop.
Too many themes ran into the story: cannibalism, environmental issues, human choices, growing up, militant madness, slave trading, and it seems as if they tried to give every small character a point of view or a novel approach while still leaving them two-dimensional. I think this could have been much better in some ways, and at the same time, there was not enough information or subtle foreshadowing to the story. Too many flashbacks kept it from being comprehensible, and it’s not enough to keep me wanting to see it again & again unlike some of the below mentioned movies:
- Book of Eli
- Soylent Green
- Mad Max
- THX-1138
- A Boy & His Dog
- Day After Tomorrow
- Panic in the Year Zero
- The Omega Man
And if you’d like to know more about the end-of-the-world genre try some of these links & a few searches of your own. Maybe then you can make your own comparison of the movie with your own favorites.
Dystopian Film Collection - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films
Find it for yourself or see what you think with a little research - http://www.downstreamthemovie.com/
Downstream @ IMDB website - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229236/
On their webite was a page where you (the viewer) could discuss what you liked about the movie. I don’t know if they’re looking for a critical analysis, but since there were only 7 notes to date I figured I’d better keep my mouth shut. Also, in searching for reviews on other websites, there were few actually reviews as the production group seemed to sponsor its own publicity. The producer kept reposting the teaser writing on other sites, and this makes me suspicious as to who’s actually seen the movie. On the other hand, I have to give them credit in doing better and more than I’ve done so far with my dreams so good for them.
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