The Humanity Bureau is a sci fi dystopian thriller set in 2030 in New America and stars Nicholas Cage as an agent of the largest government agency, i.e. the title, which weighs the value of citizen’s contributions against what that citizen “takes.” If the scale is not in your favor, you are sent to New Eden for resettlement. When the agent begins to question the humanity of his orders, he embarks on a journey to discover the paradise of memories.
I am never dismissive of Cage’s movies. Mom and Dad was a great horror movie. The Humanity Bureau’s premise appealed to me, and the initial scenes did a decent job of plausibly evoking this future as the inevitable conclusion of the events unfolding today. The actual logistics of this world and its hearkening of history, our present, as the backdrop to this conflict made the opening scenes thrilling in spite of the poor production values. There is even a dig at Mitt Romney’s ingratiating attempt to become Secretary of State. Unfortunately the movie soon devolved from what could have been an innovative approach to the trite narrative into a predictable and boring action movie that belongs more to the past than the future.
The Humanity Bureau shows how the agent takes a personal interest in one of his assignments, a woman and a young boy. I was actually excited that he seemed less interested in the woman as a potential love interest and identified more with the boy. There was a provocative therapeutic potential to the narrative because when he was younger, his last memory of nature and family before complete environmental collapse is of him and his mother fishing in Canada. One person challenges his memory and reframes it as the point before he and his mother almost died, but he does not believe him. It made sense that seeing these two would provoke him into questioning his orders and seeking to recapture the idyllic past. He is not trying to save others. He is trying to save himself.
Unfortunately I was giving The Humanity Bureau more credit than it was due because there is a disappointing about face on the romantic angle and a personal revelation that completely obliterates my story, which I think is far superior to the crap that they ended up doing. The actual narration retroactively ruins the parallels between the agent’s past and his present thus making it more shallow, conventional and forgettable. What a waste of oneiric sequences! It borrows elements from Jeremiah Johnson if he was German, The Road, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and The Walking Dead (don’t worry, there are no zombies), but fails in actually elevating the quality of the movie.
The Humanity Bureau could have been a good movie, but it feels as if everyone gave up and decided that it was easier to be crap after the first third. From 80s gun play to cheesy car flips, this movie is sadly dreadful and not fun enough to be an enjoyable bad movie. The direction of the scenes is awkward and plodding. The only consistent performance of a character that feels like a real person and not a two dimensional archetype is by Vicellous Shannon, who plays Agent Porter and may be one of the bad guys, but is clearly just as wary of his coworkers as we are and just here for the paycheck so he does not become Soylent Green. I feel as if I can imagine what he says when he gets home and vents about his day. Cage’s agent may be shocked and appalled by what he discovered, but I suspect that Agent Porter and all his close friends and family already knew what was going on and are just trying to survive, which still makes him complicit, but relatable as an uncomfortable sellout.
Cage may have more in common with Agent Porter than his character. They both seem to be there for the paycheck and do not seem too invested in the outcome of the movie. Cage looks cadaverous and brings little of his unhinged magic to the venue, which isn’t required, but wouldn’t hurt. Instead he cedes the scene chewing to his costar, Hugh Dillon, who plays his frenemy, Adam. Dillon seems to be inspired by Kurtwood Smith’s performance in the original RoboCop, but he seems less crazy and unpredictable than pressed for no discernible reason. I decided that he had an unspoken, unrequited love interest in Cage’s character and was angry at him for making him feel again. Like many men, he is incapable of exploring his full emotional palette and defaults to anger when he is uncomfortable instead of fully exploring what he is experiencing. (Side note: again, I think that I’m giving the movie more credit than it deserves, and he is just a standard bad guy.) In general, the acting is dreckitude by everyone. Most of the characters are unlikeable and inaccessible, even the child.
Some scenes logistically did not make any sense such as the bathroom scene. Why are you letting him go? What is happening? The denouement seemed rushed and unrealistic even with the eleventh hour revelation to the masses. I’m not saying that it could never be satisfying. It just didn’t seem believable that people who were already successfully evading government scrutiny would be the first ones to react. Wouldn’t it be the people who actually subjected themselves to the productive citizen test? Also I wish there were a line stating whether or not everyone failed the test or showed someone passing. I think that would make the end more powerful.
The Humanity Bureau never fully embraced its dystopian trappings and instead devolved into a sci-fi action movie from the 1980s. Its wasted potential simply angered me. Skip this movie and watch Mom and Dad instead. Then encourage the people who made this movie to see Sorry to Bother You.
