No sooner does Senator Amidala's private spaceship lands on a
platform on Coruscant than it is torn apart from an explosion caused by a bomb.
Padme (Natalie Portman) is unharmed--she was actually piloting one of the escort fighters--yet the
woman who was her decoy was killed, along with several others in her staff.
Amidala suspects her would-be assassin is the mysterious Count Dooku (Christopher
Lee), who is the driving force behind a growing separatist movement that
threatens to fracture the Republic. Chancellor Palpitine insists that the Jedi
Knights, specifically Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Annikin
Skywalker protect Amidala. Although it's been years since he's seen her,
Annikin--who, as played by Hayden Christian, is nothing more than a spoiled brat--still
holds a torch for the lovely Padme. Yet he can't let love get in the way
of his duty, especially since the assassins make a second attempt on Padme's
life by inserting two poisonous centipede-like creatures into her bedroom while
she sleeps.
After a frenzied chase in the skies of Coruscant, Obi-Wan and Annikin track the
droid that released the critters back to the assassin, a changeling named Zam,
who is killed before she can reveal the name of her employer, a bounty hunter.
Padme goes back to Naboo with Anikin for her safety--and also so they can fall in
love in a really sappy romance subplot--while Obi-Wan is given the far more
interesting task of hunting down this bounty hunter. The trail leads him to a
secretive planet named Kamino, where the inhabitants are building a vast new
army made entirely out of clones. When the narrative stays with Obi-Wan, again
played by the superb Ewan McGregor as a far more mature man than he was in
Phantom, Attack Of The Clones is a taunt, fascinating tale as we watch the
layers of this mystery slowly being peeled away.
Unfortunately, whenever we are with Annikin and Padme on Naboo, the story slows
down to a crawl. The problem is that Natalie Portman--who also returns as Padme
and is still a better actor than her leading man--and Christen are portraying two
legendary characters in Star Wars mythology, the parents of Luke and Leia, and
yet their intimate scenes together have all the warmth of a bowl of ice cream.
Strangely enough, there is virtually zippo chemistry between these two; their
love scenes come off as being so stilted and uneasy that the viewer has to fight
to keep from fast-forwarding to the good stuff. And Hayden Christen's
performance as the man who will be Vader is so bad as to be non-existent. His
line delivery is as flat and lifeless as his expression, and I suspect this is
not really the actor's fault, but the fault of Lucas, who is not exactly known
as an "actor's director".
Still, Attack Of The Clones has a lot going for it. The film introduces a cool
new villain in the form of Jango Fett, the father of Boba Fett, who is also in
this film as a young boy. Another welcome addition to the cast is legendary
Hammer film actor Christopher Lee, who took time off from playing Saruman in the
Lord Of The Rings films to portray Count Dooku. We also finally begin to see a
connection to the Classic Star Wars series in the moisture farm that Annikin and
Padme visit, which would one day become Luke's home on Tatoonie, as well as a
brief glimpse of the computer blueprints of the Death Star. As with Phantom, the
production design, and special effects are also outstanding. The massive ground
battle sequence at the end of the film, along with a climatic lightsaber duel
between the various Jedi Knights, is well worth the price of the DVD alone. And
like Phantom, Clones also comes with a second disc of well-produced special
features. If you skip the sappy love scenes, this film serves as a good prologue
to the next and final film in this series, the far-better Revenge Of The Sith.
--SF
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