After Earth is disappointingly generic

After Earth
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Will Smith, Jaden Smith
*

Humanity's home planet hardly merits the name-check in After Earth, M Night Shyamalan's sci-fi survival tale whose shipwreck action could take place on any old life-supporting globe in the cosmos.

The disappointingly generic film, which strands a father and son (Will and Jaden Smith) on Earth a thousand years after a planet-wide evacuation, will leave genre audiences pining for the more Terra-centric conceits of Oblivion, not to mention countless other future-set films that find novelty in making familiar surroundings threatening.

Plans for a franchise seem to be afoot, with filmmakers reportedly having written "1,000 years of backstory" for the father-son characters and their society. They must be saving an awful lot for comic book and video game spin-offs, though, since the film squeezes its millennium-long set-up into a few short moments of voice-over introduction.

We learn that, having ruined our environment, humans decamped en masse to Nova Prime, which would have been a nice place if not for the monsters that had been bred to kill humans. (By whom? Buy the comic book.) What we don't learn in the too-quick intro is how all humankind came to speak in the same accent, most reminiscent perhaps of New Zealand's - one that suits none of the cast very well, and makes Jaden Smith's voice-over hard to follow.

In any event, Cypher Raige (the elder Smith) comes home between long campaigns to find his son Kitai struggling to live up to his legacy. He decides to take the boy along on an interstellar voyage, but the ship is thrown off course by a gravitational storm and must land on the nearest planet. A crash-landing on Earth leaves Cypher's legs badly broken, and he must coach Kitai via camera phone as he makes a 100-kilometre trek, dodging predators to find the chunk of wreckage that can save their lives.

Shyamalan is of little help to Jaden Smith when his character faces internal challenges: his performance, all furrowed brow and worried eyes, gives us no reason to believe Kitai is made of the same tough stuff as his father. Shyamalan's missteps in the conception and execution of After Earth are akin to the head-scratching choices that kept his The Happening from fulfilling its doomsday-flick potential.

Also, what seasoned soldier would send his son on a deadly four-day mission with a backpack the size of a bicycle seat? – AP

@LifeNationalUAE

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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