Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Rob W. King, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Hugh Dillon, Sarah Lind, Jakob Davies.
Oscar-winner Cage (Leaving Los Vegas, Adaptation, The Rock) plays
Noah Kross, an agent in The Humanity Bureau, a government organisation that determines whether a citizen is productive. It assesses whether people who live outside of the city walls are able to care for themselves.
It also decides whether the people should be resettled to a mysterious location called the New Eden.
A determined and unbiased caseworker, Kross is on a mission. He’s sent to evaluate the farm of a single mother and her young son. The action he pursues after meeting Rachel Weller (Lind, True Justice, What Goes Up) and Lucas (Davies) sets off a chain of events that changes everything. It not only exposes the bureau’s secret methods, but also the fate of those it has judged.
Rachel’s farm is barren, and Kross decides to send them both to the relocation centre. Once this decision becomes apparent, his superior Adam Westinghouse (Dillon, Wind River, Flashpoint, Continuum, The Killing) takes every step to stop them all.
If this is the near future, it’s certainly bleak. Global warming turns parts of the American midwest into a desert. Climate change and other factors cause such harm that resources become scarce and the divide between the haves and have-nots are impossible to cross.
Written by Dave Schultz (Considering Love and Magic, Blackstone), this sci-fi action thriller is set in an imagined place that director King (Hungry Hills, Corner Gas) brings to the forefront.
To win one of three DVDs of The Humanity Bureau, just tell us the name of Rachel’s son. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by next Monday, 30 July 2018. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column week.
