Last night I took a chance on
Zone 39, by that I mean I had not heard of the movie and didn't really know anything about it heading in.
The general setup is that in the future, there are two nations, the Central Union and the Federation. They have established an uneasy cease-fire/truce and have setup a co-operative effort in a place called Zone 39.
Our story gets started when Anne, a crypto-coder fo some sort for the Central Union, is trying to prove the inadequaacies of her boss' computer security methods, so she manages to hack into a highly classified area of the computer network, and stumbles across information that alludes to some sort of bio-chelmical accident with a pretty high death count. He boss discovers her activities...and she is killed on the way home from work that night. Her husband, Leo Megaw, does not realize it was a murder, thinks she has been killed in accidental gunfire. He goes a bit nuts and gets himself in trouble with a violent outburst. Sitting in jail, he is given the option to go to an outpost near Zone 39, basically to be a high-tech 'border patrol' to stop people from trying to go from one side to the other across the desert. So, he goes along.
It's a lonely outpost and he is the only one stationed there, so he passes the time by recreating a sort of drug-induced hallucination of his wife to talk to, as well as talking to an iguana named "Archie", shooting the occasional "Classified" (criminal trying to cross the border), watching his counterpart across the border, and checking himself for bio-chemical contamination. As time goes by, he begins to suspect that something may be wrong..and he is right....
He begins to realize that there has been a bio-chemical spill in Zone 39, probably related to illgeal weapons development by the Central Union, or the Feds, or both. It's been covered up, but it has contaminated the surrounding water supply, that happens to provide water for the nearby city of Urbana, so he must try to get together with his counterpart from the Fedreration across the border, who doesn't trust him, and hijack an old satellite communications outpost to broadcast a warning message to the people of both sides (as the governments control all normal communciation outlets). The Central Union knows what Leo has discovered, and tries to kill him as he tries to get the word out.
I liked this movie, or more precisely, I enjoyed watching it. It seemed a fairly low-budget offering but worked within it's budget and used some desolate areas of Australia to good effect. You got a good sense of the isolation invovled in manning this outpost which led to a good sense of 'is he going nuts', and the tenson builds well to the climax. I thought Peter Phelps overacted quite a bit in a few dramatic moments. The movie slowed down a bit in the middle as it was just Leo keeping himself busy, talking to his dead wife and to the lizard, and to the computer, but it was basically just Leo talking to himself and that can get a little worrisome. There were some setup plot lines, such as the governments constantly being at war before being taken over by large corporations to establish peace, that could've been interesting but were not explored. Also, the more I think about it, the more the whole contamination/cover-up main thrust of the plot really doesn't hold together, but you can ignore that and just go along where it takes you.
