Sacrifice

Like its shallow characters, Sacrifice strains to be clever and provocative without anything meaningful to share.

Struggling to modulate its wild tonal shifts, this offbeat dystopian comedy takes some rather obvious satirical jabs at wealth, privilege, fringe belief systems, and superficial philanthropy. Despite some scattered big laughs, however, there’s not much substance beneath the pretentious quirks.

The opening shot features a simmering volcano on a sun-drenched Greek island that remains a constant presence throughout.

It provides an ominous backdrop for a lavish charity gala being staged inside of a nearby quarry, virtue signaling for vague environmental movement and hosted by a tech mogul (Vincent Cassel) and his pop-star wife (Salma Hayek Pinault).

Among the do-gooders is Mike (Chris Evans), an actor apparently on the heels of a personal scandal, trying to rehabilitate his image with some social-media narcissism. He’s not entirely sure whether he wants to champion the cause or denounce it, but he’ll gladly hog the spotlight either way.

Then the event is interrupted by a group of eco-terrorists led by volcano-worshipping cult leader Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) who takes hostages while espousing a doomsday scenario. “An extinction event is coming within two days,” she babbles. “We are here to stop it.”

A confused Mike plays along, mostly because he happened to be out of the room when all the chaos went down. By the time he realizes Joan’s true intentions, his only hope is to spin it into an act of vainglorious heroism.

Evans leans into the eccentricities of a man who’s vain yet insecure while navigating a surreal saga of redemption and self-discovery. The remainder of the cast is mostly squandered, including a scenery-chewing John Malkovich as Joan’s unstable father.

The first English-language feature from French director Romain Gavras (Athena) is driven by exaggerations, although it’s too detached from reality to connect on any kind of deeper emotional level.

The sardonic screenplay by Gavras and playwright Will Arbery attempts to dig into the ideological zealotry of its radicalized cult, but we’re not incentivized to care about these rebels or their misguided cause.

Muddling through some ambitious thematic concepts, Sacrifice transitions awkwardly into a high-stakes action thriller in the final act. Yet it never really erupts.

Rated R, 103 minutes.