The Relic

Saw The Relic (thanks, Basil!) It was a thriller from the 90s which was pretty good. It follows a museum where a mysterious shipment from a researcher in Brazil is causing a bit of mayhem. After a few bodies show up a detective is called on the scene. He is the foil for the attractive female evolutionary biologist who is the other main character in this film. There's a good dose of leftover-80s silliness, what with the cop being superstitious and the scientist imperiously rolling her eyes at him. There's also only two distinct classes of people: the snooty intellectuals and the hard-bitten cops. But apart from all that, the film is quite fun.

I think I was mainly just in the mood for a slightly goofy thriller, but of course to preserve my self-delusion of impartiality, I seized upon the setting as being a great selling point. The museum's back-corridors are wonderfully twisty and stuffed full of specimens and samples. The oak paneling and the mesh cages seemed very authentic and reminded me of my undergrad university and my current school with its industrial "steam tunnels."

This film is thematically concerned with the relationship between science and religious lore, this relationship literally playing out between Mrs Scientist and Mr Cop. When they inevitably team up and become friends, the film weds the "primitive peoples" hocus-pocus with the scientific hocus-pocus. Some of the science there, by the way, seems fairly plausible to me, but there were a few times I could definitely smell the bullshit (eg: they claim that individuals evolve, not populations) so I don't know how much of the techno-babble to trust. Also, a word about the cop-scientist relationship: it never blossoms into full-blown bullshit romance. It's heading there, but we are spared unnecessary smooching, for example. I think this is to remain kid-friendly, but I'm refreshed to think that a man and woman could kind of altruistically cooperate.

Anyway, the film is deeply silly but fundamentally entertaining. I've seen better but I've also seen much worse. This is definitely popcorn fare but it's good popcorn fare. If you're in the mood for mindless entertainment, this is at least not cruel or incompetent. In fact, even if you're in a hostile mood, it obligingly provides a soft underbelly to bite into. This is a congenial film.