Code 46:

This was a movie I hadn’t seriously intended to watch. Just one of those things that was “on” while I did something else, and then something funny happened. I stopped doing the “something else”. Not an ‘epic’ movie by any means, but a beautiful movie to watch. In widescreen, the vast, blasted landscapes, couples with empty, futuristic scenes, and the haunting, lyric-free soundtrack? Yep, this one’s a keeper.

Plot: Code 46 is a love story set in an eerily possible near-future where cities are heavily controlled and only accessible through checkpoints. People cannot travel unless they have “papelles,” a special travel insurance. Outside these cities, the desert has taken over and shanty towns are jammed with non-citizens – people without papelles whose lives are severely restricted. William (Robbins) is a family man who works as an insurance investigator.

When his company sends him to another city to solve a case of fake papelles, he meets a woman named Maria (Morton). Although he knows she has been creating the forgeries, he falls completely in love with her. He hides her crime and they have a wild, passionate affair that can only last as long as his papelles: 24 hours. Back home, William is obsessed with the memory of Maria. He tries to see her but is refused the necessary papers to travel. Desperate, he uses one of the fake papelles he kept from his investigation. He eventually tracks her down, only to discover she has been accused of a Code 46 violation. [JoBlo]

Title Card: code 46 / article 1 / any human being who shares the same nuclear gene set as another human being is deemed to be genetically identical. the relations of one are the relations of all. / due to IVF, DI embryo splitting and cloning techniques it is necessary to prevent any accidental or deliberate genetically incestuous reproduction. / therefore: / i. all prospective parents should be genetically screened before conception. if they have 100%, 50% or 25% genetic identity, they are not permitted to conceive / ii. if the pregnancy is unplanned, the foetus must be screened, and pregnancy resulting from 100%, 50% or 25% genetically related parents must be terminated immediately / iii. if the parents were ignorant of their genetic relationship then medical intervention is authorised to prevent any further breach of code 46 / iv. if the parents knew they were genetically related prior to conception it is a criminal breach of code 46

Code 46 (2003)
A futuristic ‘Brief Encounter’, a love story in which the romance is doomed by genetic incompatibility.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Writer: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Stars: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton and Om Puri

Code 46 is a love story set in a Brave New World-type near-future where cities are heavily controlled and only accessible through checkpoints. People cannot travel unless they have “papeles” (papers in Spanish; words and sentences in many languages, especially Spanish, French and Chinese are mixed with English in this new world), a special travel permit issued by the totalitarian government, the “Sphinx”. Outside these cities, the desert has taken over and shanty towns are jammed with non-citizens – people without IDs forced to live primitive lives. William is a family man who works as a government investigator. When he is sent to Shanghai to solve a case of fake IDs, he meets a woman named Maria. Although he realizes she is behind the forgeries, he cannot help but fall completely in love with her. He hides her crime and they have a wild, passionate affair that can only last as long as his visa: 24 hours… Written by Anonymous

[JoBlo, IMDB, and me ]

Ads for “The Eagle” are all over the TV up here in Canada and, if it were not for the awesome movie “Centurion” that came out before it and showed how it should be done, maybe I’d be interested in the ‘new’ movie. Sadly, not so much. This has all the makings of another very weak copy of a far better film. Beefcake aplenty I’m sure it will have but story? Not so much, I’m thinking. ‘Salon‘ has this:

“The Eagle” is the second movie within a year to tackle a historical controversy: The mysterious fate of the Ninth Spanish Legion, once commanded by Julius Caesar, which purportedly disappeared somewhere in Britain around the year 117 A.D. (I say “purported” because some historians think it didn’t happen that way at all.) The first one was Neil Marshall’s underappreciated “Centurion,” an ultraviolent mud-and-blood saga starring Michael Fassbender as the commander of a tiny group of Ninth Legion survivors trying to fight their way home through the contradictions of empire. If “Centurion” was almost too obviously a parable about contemporary America’s overseas misadventures, it was held together by forceful performances, visual intensity and sheer narrative drive, none of which are much in evidence in “The Eagle.”

Want something better? Watch ‘Centurion‘: