THX 1138 (1971)

good back-story, and good acting

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

From nowhere to nowhere. but maggie mcomie is a muse...

THX 1138 (1971) ** (out of 4)Set in the future, George Lucas' feature-length debut as director tells the story of a man (RObert Duvall) and woman (Maggie McOmie) who decide to rebel against the rules of not experiencing love/sex. The two of them stop taking the drugs that they're supposed to take and set off to do what they want.THX 1138 is the type of movie I respect more than I actually enjoyed watching it. It's pretty clear from watching this that Lucas certainly had a talented eye as it's rather amazing what he was able to do with such a small budget. With that said, as much as I enjoyed certain aspects of this film, at the same time I'm not going to lie because it bored me pretty bad.On a visual level THX 1138 is quite amazing because you really do get the feeling that you're viewing something set in the future. The sets certainly give you a futuristic feel and there's no doubt that Lucas manages to build up a very thick atmosphere. I really liked the look of the film as well and especially how most of the film is done in long shots.I'd also say that Duvall and McOmie are very good in the lead roles and that Donald Pleasance is also very good. The cinematography is top-notch and there's no doubt that Lucas made a very believable and good looking film. Still, there's really no connection I had to the characters or the story, which is what made the film rather boring to get through.

There seems to be a thing with dystopias where everyone has shaved heads. The Island, Alien 3 and this one comes to mind, but I'm sure there are plenty of others. Maybe this is the first, though? THX 1138 is a beautiful movie, and I'm sure there's not a single shot in it that is not interesting in some way. The visuals are great, the raw look of the people involved, the chrome faced android police, the completely white "prison" - there's a lot of good visual design here. Only outmatched by the locations used. The location scouts did a really good job finding real places that could be incorporated into this bleak universe.In the movie you follow THX 1138 who, after breaking some laws, escapes from the law. That's obviously over simplifying it, but honestly not that much. The story is this movie's major weak point, and it makes the movie a bit of a drag at times. The bleak dystopian setting is interesting, and it is explored a bit through the plot. I'm guessing that Lucas wanted to convey a mood and an atmosphere more than a thrilling fable.I'd love for Lucas to make more experimental stuff like this. Even though it's not perfect by any means, it's from exploring ideas like this that the greatest movies are made.

Oh, no!! Here we go again with yet another preposterously bleak and suffocatingly stupid Sci-Fi tale that seems determined to tell us all just how horrible man's future is destined to be.... Spare me! Originally released in 1971, this particular version of THX-1138 was George Lucas's "Director's Cut" which, in 2004, was given something of a face-lift where new CGI footage was added to its storyline to give its claustrophobic settings and bleak backgrounds more pizazz.Unfortunately THX-1138's story was such an awful bore from start to finish that any visual improvements only proved to me what a hopeless dud this futuristic tale actually was without these modernizations.To me, THX-1138 was one of those super slow-paced movies whose story was so utterly absurd (and the dialogue so demented) that I swear they were actually making this idiotic nonsense up as they went along. Yes. It was really that bad.I certainly wish that I wasn't speaking so negatively about this picture (which I think had a lot of potential), but I'm certainly not going to tell you a pack of glowing lies about a movie that I thought was just a huge heap of pure Sci-Fi excrement.If nothing else - THX-1138 certainly proved to be an excellent sleeping pill for this disappointed viewer.