Tank Girl (1995)

Powerful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The world has been devastated by a comet and most of the water is gone. Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell) and the Water & Power Corporation control 95% of the remaining water. Rippers are mysterious mutants killing and pillaging without leaving a trace. Rebecca Buck (Lori Petty) live in a small isolated community. W&P attacks and Rebecca is taken prisoner. She befriends scared mechanic Jet Girl (Naomi Watts). They try to use Rebecca as bait for the Rippers. Jet Girl musters up the courage and steals the jet to join her. She steals a tank and becomes Tank Girl. They discover that her young friend Sam was sent to work in the sex club Liquid Silver. After a failed rescue, Tank Girl and Jet Girl stumble upon the Rippers' hideout. They turn out to be mutated kangaroo-human supersoldiers.Tank Girl may be the lead but I love Jet Girl. Lori Petty is possibly the perfect Tank Girl. She has the great irreverent energetic wildness. This is a campy comic book movie. It doesn't get campier than kangaroo hybrids but this movie won't be restrained by that. It is broadly amateurish and unrelenting cheesy. It's no masterpiece but it's awkwardly fun. Jet Girl does put this over the top for me and it's probably the first film I noticed Naomi Watts. It's likely years later that I realized that it was Naomi Watts after she got big. It also has some good music. There is simply nothing like this movie.

Set in post apocalyptic Earth, circa 2033, well after a moderate sized comet impacted the planet. It has not rained for 11 years, the film says. This is a politics-of-scarcity environment, with the most rare commodity being water, the next being public and private security. The law of the jungle has replaced rule of law.The protagonist is Tank Girl, who survives by finding water by whatever means and by helping guard the compound where she lives. The compound is breached early on. Her boyfriend is killed, and her tween female friend Sam is abducted to be sent to a house of prostitution. Tank Girl is enslaved.Tank Girl breaks free, of course, and acquires friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl during the film. Her main goals are survival, which includes obtaining water, and taking on Water and Power, which is a monopoly that no one likes, and are the folks who enslaved her.So, do {Tank, Jet, Sub} Girls find allies to make a dent against Water and Power? Do they finally end the sub-plot of Sam being in danger?The attempts at humour are many and are easily recognizable, just not funny. I might have given this film full marks if had just been funny. The film's plot, such as it was, was done archipelago style. That is, an island scene here, followed by those terrible inter-titles and overly loud music, then another island. The whole sort of lurches toward coherence, and sort of makes it.

This film commits the biggest sin in cinema, that is making the main protagonist completely unlikeable. I hated her voice, I hated her hair and I hated her personality. Where as other films like "A Clockwork Orange" had an Anti-Hero as a protagonist, I couldn't bring myself to dislike him even when doing these cruel sickening things, I can't even remember Tank Girl's name. Speaking of A Clockwork Orange, Alex (Aka Malcolm Mcdowell is in the film and he needs to escape before it's too late. The film feels so forced and contrived as well. I recall there was a Dance number out of nowhere. Why was it there? What point did it have? It in no way moved the plot forward. That's basically this film, a collection of plot points bridged together by pointless filler. Stay far away.

Hard to understand. Its an "R" rated movie but its written for children, or maybe the problem is that it was directed and produced for children, whatever the case as an adult watching the movie is awkward. I'm not developmentally delayed so the child-like humor and wit of the movie is like drinking sulfuric acid, I mean Lori Petty's acting and delivery causes real pain. Some cut-scenes show the comics this movie is adapted from and those scenes are intriguing those scenes are vivid glowing things- and when you think that its merely comic book art stills, y'know, motionless movie frames then compare it to the actual motion picture, its clear that the drawings are the best parts. Everything sucks, the lighting the acting the costumes the sets, but raise a glass to Naomi Watts, she can actually act and is gorgeous as a brunette.