Thank the Netflix algorithm for this one, I guess… I have never heard of this movie, but it is apparently a recommended film under the “Relentless Crime Thrillers” category. From the trailer, it stars Clive Owen (where has that guy been for the past 5 years?) and Amanda Seyfried. Clive Owen plays a cop (I think?) and Amanda Seyfried plays a hacker who can interact with people’s perception of the world (again, just spitballing from the trailer).
I know I’ve seen Seyfried in a few things… She was in “In Time” with Justin Timberlake, and I know shes been in a few others, but I don’t really have an encyclopedic knowledge of her movies… I know in general, her films don’t tend make me want to see them. Clive Owen, though, that guy is pretty solid. “Children of Men” is outstanding, along with “Inside Man”. He also was pretty good in “Bourne Identity”. Again, he is in a lot of movies but i just haven’t had the chance to see them all.
Anyway, for this one, here is the trailer. I’ll watch it and report back.
This movie is essentially a high-budget episode of “Black Mirror”. If you like that sort of thing, this movie will be right up your alley. I liked it, myself. It is a small movie, but it does a lot with a little. Its a strong concept, and it leans into it pretty well. The ending kind of sucks, but its 2/3 of a good movie at least. This movie is essentially another one of the Netflix specialties… An interesting concept with a few big name stars, but there are definite issues with the script and the direction. It’s designed to drive people to a Netflix subscription, and it probably wouldn’t do well enough in theaters.
Lets start with Clive Owen… This movie has made me realize that I don’t think he is a very good actor. He is the same type of character in every movie, and he gets by on his British-style American accent so he sounds like he has gravitas. He plays a detective in this movie… Again, he is fine. Ill watch him in a movie, and that is probably why he was cast.
Amanda Seyfried is actually a good actress. I think she emotes well, and I honestly didnt recognize her right away. This movie isn’t a great canvas for her talents, but it was fine. She plays a mysterious hacker in this movie that can delete records from everyone’s eye-cameras, and she has a big monologue at the end about why privacy is important. Again, she is fine in this one.
The setting of this movie is where things are pretty interesting. Essentially, everyone has these vision cameras installed in their person where they are able to record everything that happens to them and then call the recording back whenever. To add to that, everyone is networked together so that the police can see what they see, with all the human experiences being tracked in the “ether”, which is like the cloud but for all the vision recordings.
Someone is going around and killing people, but the killer is somehow hacking the Ether and his/her victims vision so that they see the killer’s perspective when he kills them. The killer then covers his digital tracks so nobody can identify him. The trail somehow leads them to Amanda Seyfried’s character, whom the police decide to corner by setting up Clive Owen undercover to hire her for a job.
Over the course of a couple of jobs she does for Clive Owen, she discovers he is a cop, so she starts screwing with his perception of the world. At least, I think its her. I’m kinda fuzzy on those details. Long story short, she isn’t the one who is killing people, but a random guy who everyone thought was a cop had hacked his way in and was killing people instead. That all comes up in the third act, which really seems like a way to not make Amanda Seyfried the ultimate bad guy, giving her the opportunity to lecture Clive Owen, and therefore the audience, on the dangers of losing privacy to a larger big-brother state. Again, pretty much standard Black Mirror stuff.
Oh wow… I was curious about what else this director has done, thinking maybe he had done a few episodes of Black Mirror. Instead, I am finding that he directed “Gattaca”, which is low-key one of my favorite science fiction films. Also, he did “In Time”, which I mentioned above as a film I liked. This guy is great in terms of finding a cool concept; of the 3 films (Gattaca, In Time, and Anon), Gattaca is the only one where i think he was able to stick the landing.
Like I said at the start, I didn’t hate this movie. I think it is a really cool concept, and when it comes to science fiction, that is 60% of the job for me. I think this movie is best if you are looking for a low key movie to watch by yourself, or with someone who is going to shut up and let you take it in. It would make an interesting conversation topic after it’s all said and done, talking about the implications of this sort of technology and how far from it we actually are as a society. I’d recommend this one, but only if you go into it with the right expectations; it isn’t the best film in the world, but it certainly is one that makes you think.
Ain't That Bad - Movie Blog 