Overview
Young Ones (UK title Bad Land: Road to Fury) is a 2014 action science fiction film directed and written by Jake Paltrow. The film stars Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Michael Shannon and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The film had its world premiere at 2014 Sundance Film Festival on 18 January 2014. The film was released on 17 October 2014 in the United States.
Plot
In a post-apocalyptic United States experiencing severe drought, people kill for water. Ernest Holm lives with his son Jerome and daughter Mary in their small townhouse and field. His wife, Katherine, is permanently hospitalized following an accident. At the hospital, she can walk while wired to a special frame. While everyone else has left the area, Ernest and his family remain, as Ernest believes that the land will grow once more if only there is irrigation. Ernest gets water for his family by delivering supplies to the "water men", who hold a government backed monopoly to distribute water extracted from deep wells. When his mule breaks its legs and he has to kill it, Ernest goes to Sam Lever's auction house and buys a robotic carrier machine called Simulit Shadow ("Sim") to replace it, beating the offers of Sam's son Flem, a young, troubled man who has been seeing Mary without Ernest's consent.
One morning, Ernest finds the Sim is missing, and he goes looking for it. When he gets to the water men, he is accused of stealing their supplies. He finds Flem transporting the stolen supplies with the Sim, planning to sell them at the border. Ernest takes Flem captive, ties him to the machine, and aims to take the supplies back to the water men. When they stop due to dehydration, Flem convinces Ernest to rehydrate with the liquor they are transporting. Wanting to escape, Flem throws a stone at Ernest's head and frames the machine for Ernest's death.
The family’s farm is revealed to have originally belonged to Flem’s father. He saves it by helping obtain illegal irrigation from the water men, then marries Mary. But after finding out Ernest had overwhelming debts to repay to a bank, which is now going to repossess the farm, Flem tricks his friend Robbie into selling his baby behind his wife's back. Robbie is killed and the Sim is lost in an altercation with the buyers. However, the machine returns limping and mangled to its manufacturer, who resides in a city across the border. The owner, Calvin Hooyman, reaches Jerome at the Holm residence via CB radio, informing him about the machine.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).