In a not so distant future, where overpopulation and famine have forced governments to undertake a drastic One-Child Policy, seven identical sisters (all of them portrayed by Noomi Rapace) live a hide-and-seek existence pursued by the Child Allocation Bureau. The Bureau, directed by the fierce Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close), enforces a strict family-planning agenda that the sisters outwit by taking turns assuming the identity of one person: Karen Settman. Taught by their grandfather (Willem Dafoe) who raised and named them - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday - each can go outside once a week as their common identity, but are only free to be themselves in the prison of their own apartment. That is until, one day, Monday does not come home. The year is 2073, where overpopulation, limited fossil fuels and global food shortage have led to the biggest crisis in human history and the enforcement of the strict mandatory one-child-per-family policy, called the "Child Allocation Act". Under those circumstances, the ruthless political activist Nicolette Cayman promises a bright future in a brave new world, while at the same time, Terrence Settman decides to get around the government's decree, in a desperate attempt to hide his septuplet grandchildren. As a result, the siblings named after each day of the week will inevitably take turns impersonating their late mother, Karen Settman, going out in the world only on the corresponding days of the week, sharing information with the rest of the sisterhood every night. And then, one day, something happens to Monday. What happened to a great idea?<br/><br/>The near future. The earth population has grown and the consequences of the global warming cannot be denied. Therefore the Child Allocation Bureau (CAB) is founded by Cayman (Glenn Close). Every parent is allowed to have one child only and after that you get sterilized. T controll that everybody has an arm wrist, which allows you to pay, to phone, to connect with anybody and – of course – your identity can be detected at any time. That is the reason why parents who should give birth to twins, triplets etc are living in hide. The CAB tries to capture these children and promise to put them into a frozen sleep until the world is in a better shape.<br/><br/>Terrence Settmans (Willem Dafoe) wife gave birth to seven children (septuplets). She died during the birth and Settman raised the septuplets (all played by Noomi Rapace) on his own. He produced an arm wrist for every child but all with the same identity: Karen Settman. Also he named every child after one day in the week and that will be the day, on which that child is allowed to leave the hiding and live a "normal" life. <br/><br/>Maybe this is the first big mistake of the whole story. It seems not that kind of a big deal, to produce this fake arm wrist. The seven children can pass every checkpoint without any problems. But later in the movie the CAB is able to locate all these arm wrists. And why not create entirely new persons? Maybe find adults without children and pretend with the fake wrist, that they are the parents? And if this is so easy, they probably aren't the first with these kind of fake wrists. More plausible would be one wrist for all – so that Terrence would have find a trick how to put them off. <br/><br/>Karen is working at a bank. One Monday, Monday is not coming back from work and the rest of the family is trying to look for her. And then the movie is getting totally out of control and dives from one plot hole to another. The problem in science fiction movies is creating a whole new world which is plausible constructed. In this movie works simply nothing. The cars do not have any airbags, the CAB gets the order to kill Karen quiet and after a quick pursuance the CAB is even killing civilians to get to Karen. Then it takes nearly five minutes to copy some data onsomething like a USB stick, and after that it takes one (!) second to send it via Wifi to another arm wrist. I could go on and on <br/><br/>Pretty annoying are the really bad dialogues, which couldn't be more pathetic. The music sounds like a open source version of the Inception O.S.T. and there is not one moment without it. And because they wanted to portrait all of the septuplets a little bit, Rapace has to change between seven stereotypes – time is to short, to give someone an individual character. Maybe they should've been focused on one child. There a some things on the plus side. The action sequences aren't too bad sometimes and are often very consequent. But the showdown fight in a server room (not the one in the bathroom) is one of the worst action showdowns I've seen in a long time. <br/><br/>I would not recommend this movie, if you want to see a serious discussion of a science fiction scenario. If you interested in light entertainment with an interesting setting, and do not get annoyed by that many plot holes, this should be your pick. Good:<br/><br/>Unique premise and setting carried by Noomi Rapace's great performance. Some good action sequences and twist. <br/><br/>Bad: <br/><br/>Formulaic story and antagonist. Wirkola, who’s best known for his two “Dead Snow” zombie movies, struggles to tackle a more serious-minded tone this time around.
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354 weeks ago