2018's The Humanity Bureau is a Late Period Direct-to-Video Nicolas Cage Vehicle Like Every Other
The Travolta/Cage Project is an ambitious, years-long multi-media exploration of the fascinating, overlapping legacies of Face/Off stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage with two components: this online column exploring the actor’s complete filmographies in chronological order and the Travolta/Cage podcast, where Clint Worthington, myself and a series of fascinating guests discuss the movies I write about here.
Read previous entries in the column here, listen to the podcast here, pledge to the Travolta/Cage Patreon at this blessed web address and finally follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/travoltacage
My career is full of weird commonalities. For example I am currently deep into the process of writing up the complete filmographies of James Belushi and Nicolas Cage.
Yesterday I posted a piece on my Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas on the 1991 cult classic Jesse Ventura vehicle Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe.
It’s a low-budget, ineptly conceived science fiction movie about an unusual law enforcement agent—in this case Abraxas, a ten thousand year old cop from outer space—who develops a conscience when he’s called upon to kill a single mother. He then becomes a fierce protector of her and her son, even when it means going against the wishes of his superiors.
In The Humanity Bureau, Nicolas Cage plays an unusual law enforcement agent—in this case an agent in a dystopian future tasked with determining who is deported to a mystery realm known as “New Eden”—who develops a conscience when he’s called upon to kill a single mother. He then becomes a fierce protector of her and her son, even when it means going against the wishes of his superiors.
The Humanity Bureau is Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe with pretensions. It’s a movie that desperately wants to say something about the inhumanity and cruelty of American life under Donald Trump but its message is muddled and its execution lacking.
The film takes place in a future that is just like the present but somehow even worse. The world has been wracked by war and famine and pestilence and clean drinking water is now a rare and valuable commodity.
Nicolas Cage plays Noah Kross, an agent for the sinister governmental organization that gives the film its name. His job is to ascertain whether or not citizens are productive enough to remain in the United States or if they will be deported to the enigmatic realm of New Eden.
This hit close to home for me because if I lived in this world I’d definitely be headed to New Eden because, while I take great pride in my work, I’m not sure I contribute that much to humanity as a whole. God knows the world needs doctors and teachers and leaders more than it does pop culture writers, particularly of the unemployed and unemployable variety.
New Eden’s name is more than a little ominous, particularly considering that it is not a place that people choose to go of their own accord but rather somewhere they’re forced to live. Or not live!
Could the evil government of the future be lying to the masses? Noah just tries to keep his head down and do his job to the best of his abilities without thinking too much, or at all, about what will happen to the lost souls he’s sent to a locale that is much closer to hell than it is to heaven.
When he’s sent to assess single mother Rachel Weller (Sarah Lind) and her son Lucas (Jakob Davies), Noah takes a shine to the fetching survivor and her handsome son for reasons that will eventually become apparent.
Noah doesn’t want to force Lucas and his mother to go to New Eden until after Lucas has had his school recital. He figures that it will be good for his self-esteem and be a positive memory for him going forward.
The Humanity Bureau depicts the future as an unlivable hellscape that, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, is murder. Yet it’s also somehow cozy and familiar enough for old-fashioned recitals where children sing songs and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
If you do not want The Humanitarian Bureau ruined stop reading now but, honestly, I think the filmmakers already spoiled things by making such a terrible film.
The Humanitarian Bureau unsuccessfully attempts to use science-fiction and metaphor to comment on the madness and ugliness of our times, specifically Donald Trump’s war on immigrants, criminals and anyone he finds undesirable.
Only instead of keeping unwanted people out through the construction of a big, beautiful wall the monsters in power here force people they consider unworthy of being part of society to move to a place where they will be slaughtered en masse as sort of an American Holocaust.
Incidentally, that last sentence made me fear that Kanye is going to put out an album called American Holocaust that comes out strongly in favor of gassing Jews. That might seem harsh but the man has destroyed his career through his enthusiastic embrace of Adolf Hitler, literally the worst person ever. You know how bad Hitler is? He’s the standard for evil.
It turns out that the reason that Noah feels a fatherly bond with the youngster in his care is because HE’S SECRETLY HIS FATHER. Wait, what? In an even more convoluted, nonsensical twist, the woman that Lucas thinks is his mother is actually a stranger who intervened when Lucas’ real mom tried to sell him, a transgression that resulted in her death and Rachel assuming her identity and raising her child.
So if you’re keeping score at home, the kind-hearted stranger is actually the dad and the mom is actually a total non-relation with a sideline in stolen identities.
I would say that these idiotic twists took me out of the movie but that would imply that I found it engaging at any point. I didn’t. It does not help that it’s a yellow and brown eyesore with little in the way of visual variety.
The Humanity Bureau aspires to social commentary that’s undermined by bad guys out of a 1980s Cannon movie, but not as fun.
No one seems to be having fun here. That’s understandable considering that it’s about an American Holocaust but I don’t recall a single moment of levity in the whole shebang.
Cage does what he can with dire material. We get Cage the proud papa here but also a generic man of action in a grim direct-to-video movie. Cage is certainly not to blame for the film’s egregious lack of quality.
On paper, or on Wikipedia, The Humanity Bureau looks a little different than Cage’s usual fare from this period. It’s a science-fiction movie, for starters, and a film that tries and fails to comment meaningfully on the cruelty and cowardice of the Trump.
In actuality this is the same forgettable nonsense with just a little bit more going on under the surface.
Help choose the movies I write about here by becoming a paid subscriber at https://nathanrabin.substack.com or by pledging the site’s Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, my next book, a massive, 650 page exploration of the long and distinguished history of American movies about the film industry at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Check out The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 3: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!
I’ve also written multiple versions of my many books about “Weird Al” Yankovic that you can buy here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?