2020 Vision

That said, this is the one fall series most likely to inspire you to buy a big-screen television. The two-hour pilot explodes with a flashback to Max's escape from a government compound in a high-volume snowmobile chase. The script is mixed: the slang can be forced, the attempts at Buffy-esque humor sometimes fall flat. But it yields up one stunning visual after another--Max perched atop a decrepit Space Needle; nine-year-old Max holding her breath under a frozen lake; Max coolly wheeling Logan down a hospital corridor as an explosion silhouettes her from behind.

What holds this bundle of dystopian dynamite together is Alba's presence. She has the grace and moves needed for all that running, rappelling and cat burgling, but with an emotional range unusual among action babes. As the morally conflicted Max, she impressively balances toughness with a sultry vulnerability--call it testostrogen--and turns within a blink from cool to coquettish as she playfully spanks a hit man she has just decked. ("Come on--you're not even trying!")

And then there's that look. Alba's Max simply looks like the future--a character who is literally the best of humankind embodied in a form that none of us can claim for our own tribe. Which, granted, may lay a tad much social import on a stylish, pumped-up, hellaciously fun comic book of a series. So let's just put it this way: we have seen the Woman of the Future, and she kicks butt.