In the not-too-distant future depicted in Rubikon, man-made climate change has turned Earth into a barren wasteland. Only the very rich have been granted access to massive architectural bubbles, featuring insulating measures that protect those citizens and their children from the toxic air outside. The rest of the population have died off, as legislative bodies dissolved to pave the way for corporations to take over, privately owning the resources necessary to survive and fighting amongst themselves in a series of squabbles. This information is relayed to us in the opening text of co-writer/director Leni Lauritsch’s film, which would perhaps be much better than it is if it was about this loaded political scenario. Instead, it barely even acts as the backdrop to a routine survival thriller.
For most of the strangely indulgent running time (nearer two hours than a self-contained story like this really needs to be), the cast is merely an ensemble of three people, with brief glimpses of others in videos or voices of dispatch operators on Earth. Hannah (Julia Franz Richter) is a soldier for one of the fascistic corporations, sent to a still-operating space station to carry out a mission that might just save humanity. Dimitri (Mark Ivanir) is a scientist who has been developing an algae that can somehow provide breathable oxygen in a confined space (It’s best just to accept this as a MacGuffin and roll with it). Gavin (George Blagden) is a chemist whose presence here is mostly to be the catalyst of the melodrama that eventually arises.
Back on Earth, a toxic fog envelops the planet, stranding the trio up in the space station without any way to contact their control center. This is also a way for Lauritsch and co-screenwriter Jessica Lind to box their characters into a corner, making every movement within the drama heightened almost by default. This means there will be acts and improvisations of desperation from the three characters who now can only interact with each other. That establishes a promise of feverish melodrama aboard this ship, and unfortunately, Lauritsch allows it to get the better of her as a filmmaker, losing focus of the actual characters on the way to giving us a lot of thinly developed conflicts and more than a few contrivances.
Dimitri’s son dies back on Earth during the toxic fog incident. Gavin attempts suicide when things seem particularly hopeless. Hannah, whose military past apparently left her sterilized, is suddenly with child and without any idea how to care for one aboard a ship stranded in space. The answer may lie within the algae developed by the scientist, but even that carries with it a third-act twist of dubious effectiveness when all is not quite what it seems. Several attempts to rescue themselves from certain death only manage to do the opposite. These are the plot details and events one expects of a survival drama like this.
As such, Lauritsch and Lind never deviate from giving us what we know we will receive with this story, which thoroughly means the actors get all the legwork of carrying this material. All three are solid, especially in the way Blagden plays everything with a mix of sobriety and dutifulness, but they are not quite able to lift this material out of the realm of the generic. Rubikon is competent but regrettably familiar.
Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight
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