This is a nightmare vision of the future. It seems 1 out of every 100 women is fertile (for some reason). The ones who aren't perform slave labor. The ones that are are "sold" off to rich families where they have sex with the husband to produce a baby. Kate (the late and missed Natasha Richardson) is one such servant to Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) and her husband the Commander (Robert Duvall). Kate wants out--but it seems there's no way.

The synopsis only scratches the surface of a VERY dark and disturbing movie. It slowly shows how women are treated and used and it just gets more horrifying as it unfolds. The parallels to Hitler's Nazi Germany are fairly obvious but here we have barren women instead of Jews and gays. The good acting by everybody makes this hard to shake off. Aidan Quinn (as Nick) and Duvall are OK; Victoria Tennant is chilling as a leader of the camps; Elizabeth McGovern is just great as a fellow prisoner who befriends Kate; Dunaway is also very good in her role. Best of all is Richardson. This couldn't have been an easy role but she pulls it off beautifully. She died at far too young an age. This is basically an unknown movie and it's easy to see why--it's far too dark and disturbing for a general audience. However the ending is (sort of) uplifting (and changed from the book). Grim, dark and depressing. View it at your own risk. The ceremony sequences are almost impossible to watch and shocked the hell out of me the first time I saw this.

In a world consumed by infertility, Kate (Natasha Richardson) is trying to escape the Republic of Gilead with her family. It's a totalitarian Christian state where fertile women are forced to conceive. The blacks, welfare, women's liberation and in vitro fertilization are among the things blamed for the world's problems. Kate and her daughter are captured while her husband is killed. Kate is made to be a handmaid trained by Aunt Lydia (Victoria Tennant). She befriends lesbian Moira (Elizabeth McGovern). She is placed with the commander (Robert Duvall) and given the new name Offred. She is ritualistically raped and expected to conceive for them. As he takes an interest in her, she fears retribution from his wife Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway). The commander is infertile and she falls for the help Nick (Aidan Quinn).

It's a harrowing world. The problem is trying to get a compelling story out of it. It's fine for the most part although the production design could be better. The last act needs an explosive ending. The movie decides on an actual explosion which does nothing for the tension. With its obvious restraints, the movie needs a less expensive and more intense final conflict. In my mind, she needs to also kill Serena Joy in an all out fight. Kate ends up waiting around for the men to save the world. It's not a terribly liberated ending.

Yes, every so often, situations happen in society that makes it appear that things couldn't get worse so you turn to films like this or "The Omega Man" or "Fahrenheit 511" to slap yourself back to reality. It's ugly, depressing, elitist, racist and filled with hopelessness. To put a flowery topping on a film like this with a cast of incredible award winning actors becomes a manipulation to get the audience inside the theater where they should have hired security guards to make sure that the audience didn't attempt suicide.

Having seen two of these actors on stage (Natasha Richardson as the titled heroine and Elizabeth McGovern as another one of the victims of this distopian world) and fans of the veteran stars (the Oscar winning Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway),I viewed this with hopes that I would find something interesting and insightful into the film's theme. What I found was an over long tedious bore that was an absolute chore to get through.

An ugly atmosphere, despicable characters and a world only masochists should wish to visit, even in fiction, this isn't only a view of hopelessness, but a message to our present world even 30 years after the film was made that says, we are far too messed up to recover, so sit back and don't enjoy the ride.