Last Idiot on the Planet Turn Off the Lights

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2007)

Theo (Clive Owen) was once an activist when he and his ex, Julian (Julianne Moore) were 20- somethings, but now he's a burned out, alcoholic bureaucrat four months behind on the rent and nothing phases him including the death of the youngest person on the planet, Baby Diego, age 18. Women are infertile. Car designs are bad. All immigrants to Britain are illegal and hunted down. And society has lost its cultural knowledge and diverse community except in London where the Royal Horse Guard still roam the streets in perfect formation.
When Theo is kidnapped by urban terrorists called the Fish led by Julian, he begins a life-changing journey to save Kee, who is pregnant, an event that has not happened for 18 years. The bleak situation of humankind is contrasted by the humorous character of Jasper (Michael Caine), an aged political cartoonist turned hippie pot farmer who lives outside the city where he cares for his catatonic invalid wife, a photo journalist who was tortured by MI-5. Jasper provides one of the last ties to the swinging London life of his youth and enables Theo a form of escapism as well as contrast to his own sense of failed politics and ideology. As Theo and Kee try to escape to a Utopian group called the Human Project, they become the foil of both the conflicts between the government and the Fish whose awareness of Kee's pregnancy will provide them with political leverage. As warfare and violence surrounds Theo, his purpose becomes a deliverance that at times verges on the biblical flight of the Xrist child.
The DVD includes extras that provides critical discussions by social critics and noted historians which verge on significant university lectures (take notes), as well as the typical kinds of additional information which add to the visual appreciation of the film. The stellar cast is a pleasure to observe ensemble, however the bleak futuristic appearance of London and the countryside is both depressing and a wake up call. This is not a lighthearted road trip storyline but a complicated critique of the many failures of ideologies, Utopian fanaticism, and nihilist projects gone wrong in every sense. It is thought provoking fare that leaves little to the imagination, but asks audiences to ponder the serious actions of modern society, intolerance, and extremism.