Until the End of the World

Wenders' stab at making the ultimate road movie is a severe disappointment. Co-scripted by Wenders and novelist Peter Carey, it's set somewhat portentously during the last weeks of 1999. The Indian nuclear satellite is out of control, but Claire (Dommartin) is too busy with her own chaotic existence to get caught up in apocalyptic panic. Carrying a stash of dirty money to Paris for two hoods, she meets an American (Hurt) also involved in a mysterious mission. As her odyssey continues via Berlin, Lisbon, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and San Francisco to the Australian outback, others join the chase: notably her novelist ex (Neill), a missing persons investigator (Vogler), and Hurt himself, whose plans to help his blind mother (Moreau) see again, with a camera his dad (von Sydow) has devised, set the limits for the film's geographically static last hour or so. If all this sounds needlessly complicated, it is. The first half is simply an over-plotted caper, devoid of suspense, comedy or anything else. The second gets heavily philosophical, and muses none too illuminatingly on dreams, images, obsessions, love, the mystery of life, etc. Despite a few felicitous moments, the film is turgid, pretentious, and dramatically lifeless.