Waterborne (2005)

So with the recent heat here in the UK and the lack of hero related films for this month, I've decided to go over some water related films. The first up is the 2005 film 'Waterborne'. Here, a terrorist attack has infected the water supply to Los Angeles, leaving the population unable to drink the water.



Now, the plot was what intrigued me, the idea that terrorists have cut off the water supply and that we'll be watching society break down. And whilst IMDB has a rating of 5.7 at the moment, Rotten Tomatoes currently has a 100% approval rating. Yeah, I've never seen that before, but this film has a 100% approval. I have no idea why. Then again the only information on Wikipedia is a brief description, a brief snippet of whose in it, who did the score, how it was the first feature film for Google Videos (Which will be shutting down in August), a list of 28 cast members, the one line about Rotten Tomatoes, and external links. That's it. As of the 28th July anyway.

There will be spoilers. I'll try my best, but I don't think I can avoid it. It's plot related so I'll leave that to last.

One things that stands out straight away, is the camera work. It is constantly moving around, even on shots where the character is just sitting there. It's just not professional. Then there's points where Bodi (Jake Muxworthy) starts beating on a guy, and the camera shows that the guy is obviously not hitting him. And then we have the news reports, where the quality is so bad, static is the only way it can get worse.


The acting is pretty meh, there aren't really any bad things to say, but I'm saying that they were any good. The main cast which you may recognise include Christopher Masterson, who you may recall from 'Malcolm in the Middle' and Mageina Tovah, who you may remember playing.......'Ursula' (The landlord's daughter) from 'Spider-Man 2' and 'Spider-Man 3'. And, alongside Ajay Naidu, who plays Vikram Bhatti, they are the best acting talent in this. But everyone in this are basically just 'there', there's no special scenes, nor are there any bad scenes. But this relates back to the plot so I'll come back to it. Right now.

Like I said, the whole idea that a city like Los Angeles, a city with nearly four million people, were told that they can't drink the water supply. The problem is, it barely features in the plot. I can't help but compare this film to 'Contagion', since both films focus on a disease and focus on multiple plots. The major difference, is that 'Contagion' actually shows us the devastation, it shows us how desperate people really can get, mainly because the film flashforwards at certain points. Then there's the game 'I Am Alive' where you play a character in a post Apocalyptic world where water is rare, and you certainly get that feel, especially if you play survivor mode where resources are even more rare.

Again, the whole problem with this film is that the main concept barely features in the film at all. Oh sure, they may mention it a couple of times, but overall, no-one really seems to have noticed, and when they do it's glanced over. I was watching this film go over three days of events, waiting for riots and looting to start, but no, nothing happens. A small crowd may yell at the army who are giving out supplies, like one gallon of water in half litre bottles, and one shoplifting incident may occur, but again, we don't really see the huge impact that cutting off the water supply would cause.

In fact, we see, what, three points when the lack of water affects people, and two of those aren't attributed to water. One point a customer tries to buy four jugs of water at the shop Vikram works, but Heera (Shabana Azmi) has restricted sales to two jugs per customer, therefore Gulu (Sarabjit Singh Kaloti) refuses to sell him more than two jugs. This of course pisses of the customer, who decides to racially abuse Heera and Gulu and saying that they shouldn't be in America at all. The American customer then sets fire to the American flag before assaulting them. That had nothing to do with the water, it was just racism. Anyone else would be pissed off and leave it at that, they wouldn't go to this extent. Especially since this is only the second day! People shouldn't be THIS desperate already!

The other point came when Bodi holds Zach (Masterson), Lillian (Tovah), Vikram, Jasmine (Lindsay Price) and her daughter hostage in a shop, begging for water. This happened on the third day, after drinking milk. Point one, okay, it's not water, but milk is a perfect substitute you idiot! Secondly, he's gone nuts after a day of going without water. Yeah, he had bottled water on the first day, he should still be fine at this point, therefore this incident wasn't about water! I'm still pretty sure that it was because of an earlier scene where Bodi tries to drink water from a tap (After being told it was infected) and Zach knocked the water out of his hand, where I'm pretty sure he still got some water in his mouth, so I think he was suffering from effects from the infected water.


The third point was when two soldiers, Ritter (Jon Gries) and Carlton (Chris Berry) stop some thieves from stealing a truck load of water. Carlton kills one of them, despite the fact that the kid was unarmed and was only driving away. Why does he do this? He expresses hatred towards different countries like Iraqi or Kazakhstan as well as threaten some Hillbillies who are taking water from an aquaduct, saying America should bomb whoever did it, but why did he shoot an unarmed American youngster? Couldn't he shoot the tyres? Fire a warning shot? He expresses regret and guilt later, but then it's never mentioned again.


This film was essentially influenced, not only by the paranoia that can be caused by a terrorist attack, but also deal with the racism that Muslims/Islamists  now get after 9/11. It's a bit of sensitive subject to touch upon, with some films going over it quite effectively, examples even including 'Armageddon of the Dead'. This film...really doesn't touch the subject. Okay, it does with the racist customer attacking Heera and Gulu, putting Heera in the hospital, and when Bodi randomly racially insults Vikram towards the start of the film, as well as when Vikram claims the police are racist when an officer is investigating Heera's assault (Though the description given to the officer doesn't really narrow the field down. Also why doesn't their shop have CCTV that they can simply give to the police?). But, like the infection of the water, again, this doesn't really feature in the film. It's mention a few times, but again, no real detail is given to the viewer, none that the audience shouldn't already know anyway.

The thing is, this film isn't bad, but, it wasn't good either. What would have made this film really good, fantastic maybe, was if it delved into the characters and the impact of the lack of water. Like I said, the characters are just there, they don't have any special or unique personalities (Except for Bodi, but his personality makes me hate him) which enable them to shine. For what was a low budget production (According to IMDB the budget was roughly one million dollars) maybe they couldn't fund a riot scene or two, but we don't really see any consequence for the water being turned off. If it fast forward a week or two or three and shown/told us a significant death toll, but again, virtually nothing happens, and whatever does happen seems too incomprehensible to happen after just three days. At one hour and fifteen minutes (Some of which was pointless imagery which amounts to nothing) we don't get a lot of information, but if they pushed the mark to a hour and, let's say thirty or forty minutes and gave a lot more depth and much more anarchy and chaos, but for what it is, it's pretty much meh at the end of the day.