Movie Expired / Loveland is Worth Contemplating. I wasn’t going to talk to you guys about Expired – or as it is also known, “Loveland.” I was just going to keep it selfishly to myself, because that’s how I roll. Selfish and miserly. No. I just didn’t know how Expired was going to play with all of you. There is a certain kind of movie that is languid, and slow, in its uncoiling movements and gestures. Sort of like my deep and resounding love for the movie The Big Blue – and it’s complicated love story… so too does Expired niggle its way under the surface of your skin. And unless you are hoping to be infected by a movie like a virus – this movie isn’t going to be for you. But if you woke up today thinking – wow, I really want a pile of movie virii eating at my brain all weekend long – then maybe this movie would be for you. I’ll let you decide that for yourself. It was this line… it was this line that turned the corner for me: “You can’t be near me, in case the things I’ve done come back to me.” She responds, “The things you done can’t come back to you, they are always with you. Inside.” and with that, I was sure that I needed to write about this one. Maybe just as an act of my own penance, and restitution. Who knows.
By the way – thanks hbizzle27773 and CY for recommending this one my way. The way you talked about it – I knew there really had to be something interesting here worth investigating. You were right.
The interesting thing about this movie is that the trailer unspools in seconds what the film takes over an hour to make clear. It takes its sweet times, and nothing is even half as clear as it appears to be in the trailer above. And I really enjoyed that. Like, for example, how the movie marvels in the lighting on April’s face (played by Jillian Nguyen – who you might know from the tv series Clickbait)… and is just happy to watch as the light swims, and changes. Or the slow cuts watching across the city. Basically the movie was filmed in Hong Kong, and then amped up a tad in after effects. I think they even shot 27 scenes in the same messy alleys, but changed it up with different dumpsters, and different trash. But it actually all works. That is for a low budget aesthetic. If you are hoping for a Denis Villeneuve version of Blade Runner #3… this isn’t for you. Look, it’s low budget AI, Robots, and a love story we’ve seen before. But if that is your mood – give it a watch. I really reveled in the slowness of it. And I’m done making excuses for it dangit.
Explain the Story of Loveland/Expired Movie To Me
Let’s jump straight to the point. Jack is not a robot. He is not some sort of AI developed by the Tyrrell Corporation. But there is another corp. that was looking for secret to eternal life. And as they searched, they took children off the street, and they conducted research on them. They reduced their hormone levels in an attempt to extend their lifetimes indefinitely. Jack didn’t realize he had been research on, or that he was a part of a study. He just knew he didn’t know his parents, and had lived a fairly low key life… a life devoid of strong emotions, and strong feelings.
When Jack sees April, something connects deep within his mind, and he follows her. He begins stalking her, in a hope to connect with her. It turned out, that April had left Vietnam, and had come to Hong Kong years before, leaving behind a child. She wasn’t able to care for this child, but her hope was to come to the big city, make money, and maybe she would be able to earn a living. But instead, she was getting older, and hadn’t really earned anything, and soon she wouldn’t be able to even do Karaoke anymore either. (Is this like, what? PG prostitution?) Anyway, eventually Jack and April begin hanging out together. But when they do, Jack begins to get sick. He visits a doctor or two, and he realizes that something deeper is wrong. Eventually, he gets connected with Dr. Bergman (Hugo Weaving – uh, Agent Smith), and Bergman realizes that Jack’s hormone levels were all jacked up. That he must have been a part of this childhood study, and that the corporation would be coming to collect Jack anytime now.
So here’s the question that the movie is posing to you, without actually coming right out and asking you this. Is a life without love… worth living. Better yet, is an ETERNAL life without love, worth living? Because that is the situation that Jack found himself in. Worse, is an eternal life, without love… and filled with debt of murderous deeds, a life worth living? Jack, a hitman for hire, had spent the beginning of the movie murdering people. Tracking people down, and then murdering them. But once he finds April… he realizes that all of that was behind him. But the moment he starts feeling… his body began creating these hormones his body had been without since childhood. The hormones that had kept his longevity firing.
The Ending of the Movie Expired / Loveland Explained
So, April tells Jack, that tonight, she will be his home… that she will be the one that will always remember him. They spend the night together, and when he wakes up, he heads downstairs where there is a van that is waiting for him with its door open. The longevity corporation has come to collect him. It’s clear that Bergman’s attempt to purge his information from the corporation’s database has failed. And, in an attempt to help Jack turn the corner from the darkness in his own heart – April stole his gun. And as the company comes to collect him, he’s powerless to fight, but there is a man, a man that has been watching from the shadows, that intercedes on his behalf and ends up dying killing the two droids come to kill collect/kill Jack.
As the movie ends, we watch as Jack tries to move on, and we see as April goes to find her daughter in the city of Vietnam. The end.
Thought on Expired / Loveland
Some movies transcend synopsizing. This is definitely one of them. It’s a movie that is much more than the sum of its parts. A story about an attempt to achieve immortality – and the uselessness of it if we can’t have passion too. If there is no connection, if there is no heart in it, why live at all? Let alone forever? That’s the obvious point of the movie. But Expired also seemed to wallow in the sadness and loneliness of urbanity. It’s a story about a son who desperately misses his mother. A man that hires prostitutes, not young ones, but older women, just to be near. To sleep alongside him. To be there, to be familiar, to be comfortable, and nothing more. It’s a sad story about the yen of loneliness and the hope for true passion, even if it kills us. And this too, this is the tale for April as well. She knows Jack is a horrible person with terrible stories that are burrowed deep in his mind. Sins. I loved tenor, the feel, and the rending heart of this movie. Was it a good movie? No. But the pathos was glorious.
Now, there was a couple threads here that are worth mentioning, talking about, asking you about. Did you notice the bits where Jack has lost track of whether he knows April already or not? And she too doesn’t exactly know either? Was this their first meeting? Was it one in a long loop of meetings? I wondered if the lack of passion spun him out in a dull repeating pattern of loss, and lack. Could he have been meeting her perpetually, and not realizing it? Could she have only allowed the meeting because this was one in a long line of familiar meetings? It really seemed like there was this recurrent hopefulness here. And it was only broken when she stole the gun, threw it away, and decided to go find her daughter. You know? I’m probably reading into this quite a bit… but I’m alright with that.
And by the way – it was really, really good to see Agent Smith again.
Edited by: CY
