Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Breacher, the leader of an elite DEA squad. These guys are so tough, they have nicknames like Monster, Sugar, Grinder, and Neck. The movie opens with them conducting a raid on a drug cartel's mansion where they steal $10 million from the cartel. They stash the money, kill all the drug dealers, and when they return to collect the money they find it missing.
Over the next six months, the team is interrogated by Internal Affairs. IA knows they stole money from drug dealers, but they can't prove it and the team doesn't crack. Once the investigation is over, the team gets back together and goes back to work. Then, one by one, members of the team start showing up dead in more and more gruesome ways. Who's killing them off? The cartel? Is it one of them?
This movie is a strange clash of styles. At times, it's really funny. The team has a lot of fun hurling insults at each other. A couple of detectives start investigating the murders, and they are a lot of fun together, always busting each others chops. One of the detectives is played by Olivia Williams, and it's interesting to hear her doing a southern accent. She actually steals the movie. I enjoyed watching her get in Schwarzenegger's face and not being intimidated by the team.
When the movie isn't being funny, it's really dark and serious. This doesn't feel like typical action movies. The kills are more gruesome, and there are consequences to every action. In most action movies, you see a car chase and you know it's not realistic. In real life, there would be crashes and people would be killed. But in most movies, everyone gets away unscathed, unless it's a principal character and the script requires them to be hurt or killed. In this movie, innocent bystanders are hurt. At one point in the car chase, someone is in a car shooting at another car, and a random driver his shot and killed. A minute later, the car hits a bicycle and the rider's head is smashed in the windshield.
The brutality of this movie is at times a little much. There were quite a few times when the entire audience gasped in shock, and everyone was silent for a minute. It's like we're used to our action movies being kind of sterile and this movie just rubs our faces in the brutality. For some people, this movie will be too much.
But I enjoyed it. I liked that it was a little out of the ordinary. I thought the story was interesting and the characters were compelling. When we find out who is behind the killings, the movie doesn't treat it like a huge reveal. Instead, it's like the movie says this person is the bad guy, now on to the next scene. It didn't feel like the movie was counting on us to be really surprised. It was just another part of the story.
The story doesn't really hold of very well if you think about it too much. Some of the character's motivations don't make a whole lot of sense, but that wasn't distracting enough to bother me while I was watching the movie. Another thing I liked was how unlikeable the characters were. We know from the beginning that Breacher and his team are stealing money. They're stealing from drug dealers, but all the same, they're not honest cops. And they don't trust anyone outside the team. Even though the detectives are trying to solve the murders of their friends, the DEA team abuses the detectives every chance they get. The only redeeming characters in this movie are the detectives.
This is a movie that will divide people. If you're like me and you like good action movies with a good story, but are tired of predictable stories and unrealistic action scenes, you might enjoy it. But I have talked to several people who absolutely hated the movie. So, fair warning.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Bad Words - 2 1/2 stars
Jason Bateman stars as Guy Trilby, a 40 year old who enters a national spelling bee. All other contestants are under 12, but Guy found a loophole in the rulebook that allows him to enter.
Guy isn't an easy character to like. He has no filter and if he doesn't like someone, he'll say the worst thing he can think of to them just to get them to leave him alone. But he meets his match with Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), an Indian boy who wants to be Guy's friend. At first Guy just insults him, but nothing bothers Chaitanya. He just smiles and keeps asking Guy questions. Finally the two become friends.
The movie is really funny in spots. I couldn't believe some of the things Guy says and does, including the ways he tries to psych his competitors out. The best scenes in the movie are between Guy and Chaitanya. The two have great chemistry together and it's nice to see this lonely kid with no friends form a bond with Guy, even if he is the worst role model a kid could ever have.
But one problem with this movie is that there isn't much to it. Guy's reason for joining the spelling bee are kept secret for most of the movie, and when we find out what the reason is it's a letdown. There are far too many scenes of Guy and Jenny (Kathryn Hahn), a reporter who is writing a story about him. Every time they are together, Jenny is trying to interview him and he's always blowing her off. After a couple of these scenes, it gets tedious.
Since we don't know what's motivating Guy, it makes it hard to root for him. There's nothing wrong with a flawed character, but we need something to help us empathize with him. In this movie, he's just a horrible person who hates everyone. It's really funny at times, but I found myself getting really bored with the movie anytime the jokes let up. It's one of those movies where the best parts are all in the trailer.
Guy isn't an easy character to like. He has no filter and if he doesn't like someone, he'll say the worst thing he can think of to them just to get them to leave him alone. But he meets his match with Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), an Indian boy who wants to be Guy's friend. At first Guy just insults him, but nothing bothers Chaitanya. He just smiles and keeps asking Guy questions. Finally the two become friends.
The movie is really funny in spots. I couldn't believe some of the things Guy says and does, including the ways he tries to psych his competitors out. The best scenes in the movie are between Guy and Chaitanya. The two have great chemistry together and it's nice to see this lonely kid with no friends form a bond with Guy, even if he is the worst role model a kid could ever have.
But one problem with this movie is that there isn't much to it. Guy's reason for joining the spelling bee are kept secret for most of the movie, and when we find out what the reason is it's a letdown. There are far too many scenes of Guy and Jenny (Kathryn Hahn), a reporter who is writing a story about him. Every time they are together, Jenny is trying to interview him and he's always blowing her off. After a couple of these scenes, it gets tedious.
Since we don't know what's motivating Guy, it makes it hard to root for him. There's nothing wrong with a flawed character, but we need something to help us empathize with him. In this movie, he's just a horrible person who hates everyone. It's really funny at times, but I found myself getting really bored with the movie anytime the jokes let up. It's one of those movies where the best parts are all in the trailer.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Divergent - 2 stars
I'm getting tired of these YA novel adaptations that only exist to cash in on the success of Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. I'm especially distrustful when the book came out within the last few years, and it's the only thing that the author has ever published. It doesn't necessarily mean the author isn't a good writer, but it does suggest they were trying really hard to create another YA franchise.
Anyway, like Beautiful Creatures and Mortal Instruments, Divergent is the latest Twilight / Hunger Games ripoff. Set in a post apocalyptic world, humanity is now grouped in five different factions. There's Abnegation (selfless), Amity (kind), Candor (honest), Erudite (intelligent), and Dauntless (brave). The idea is keeping everyone in a different group will help keep the peace. The idea is everyone picks a faction at age 16, and they stay with that faction for life. Not sure exactly what each faction's role is in society. Dauntless is the soldier / police force, I think Abnegation is the ruling class, and Erudite is the scientists. Not sure what the others do. If you want to know whether a dress makes you look fat, you go find a Candor. And if you need a shoulder to cry on, you find someone from Amity. I really got a kick out of the idea that one faction is perfectly content to work in the field all day.
Anyway, Tris (Shailene Woodley) takes her test and finds that she is a divergent. That means she is too strong willed or something, and she doesn't fit into any of the groups. She has to keep it a secret, because if they find out she's a divergent, she'll be cast out and be factionless (homeless). So she joins Dauntless and starts training to be a soldier.
That's the first two hours of this movie. In the last 20 minutes, a plot actually develops. It involves Candor wanting to take power away from Abnegation, and use the Dauntless soldiers to kill a bunch of people. Something like that.
This movie was really boring. It only exists to set up the next two movies, which of course are already green lit. There is no reason the movie can't do that and also work as a good movie on its own, but the writers aren't interested in that. The first half hour is basically nothing but history and exposition. The movie tells us instead of shows us what the world is like. The characters weren't well developed, so I had no interest in what Tris was going to decide, or whether she would be discovered.
The training is set up as being incredibly difficult, but it turns out to be pretty weak. The first time Tris fights another new recruit, they're told that they have to fight until someone can't continue. We see Tris get punched a time or two, and then the movie cuts to the aftermath. She only has one bruise on her cheek and seems okay. So much for brutal combat. The only tension for most of the movie is seeing whether she'll score high enough to stay in Dauntless. It's like if the entire plot of Harry Potter was whether Griffindor would score enough points to beat Slytherin.
There's nothing much to like in this movie. I did enjoy the scene where she zip lines across the entire city, and the last 20 minutes was somewhat exciting. But that may have seemed more exciting because of the dullness that preceded it. Yeah, I'd say you can skip this one.
Anyway, like Beautiful Creatures and Mortal Instruments, Divergent is the latest Twilight / Hunger Games ripoff. Set in a post apocalyptic world, humanity is now grouped in five different factions. There's Abnegation (selfless), Amity (kind), Candor (honest), Erudite (intelligent), and Dauntless (brave). The idea is keeping everyone in a different group will help keep the peace. The idea is everyone picks a faction at age 16, and they stay with that faction for life. Not sure exactly what each faction's role is in society. Dauntless is the soldier / police force, I think Abnegation is the ruling class, and Erudite is the scientists. Not sure what the others do. If you want to know whether a dress makes you look fat, you go find a Candor. And if you need a shoulder to cry on, you find someone from Amity. I really got a kick out of the idea that one faction is perfectly content to work in the field all day.
Anyway, Tris (Shailene Woodley) takes her test and finds that she is a divergent. That means she is too strong willed or something, and she doesn't fit into any of the groups. She has to keep it a secret, because if they find out she's a divergent, she'll be cast out and be factionless (homeless). So she joins Dauntless and starts training to be a soldier.
That's the first two hours of this movie. In the last 20 minutes, a plot actually develops. It involves Candor wanting to take power away from Abnegation, and use the Dauntless soldiers to kill a bunch of people. Something like that.
This movie was really boring. It only exists to set up the next two movies, which of course are already green lit. There is no reason the movie can't do that and also work as a good movie on its own, but the writers aren't interested in that. The first half hour is basically nothing but history and exposition. The movie tells us instead of shows us what the world is like. The characters weren't well developed, so I had no interest in what Tris was going to decide, or whether she would be discovered.
The training is set up as being incredibly difficult, but it turns out to be pretty weak. The first time Tris fights another new recruit, they're told that they have to fight until someone can't continue. We see Tris get punched a time or two, and then the movie cuts to the aftermath. She only has one bruise on her cheek and seems okay. So much for brutal combat. The only tension for most of the movie is seeing whether she'll score high enough to stay in Dauntless. It's like if the entire plot of Harry Potter was whether Griffindor would score enough points to beat Slytherin.
There's nothing much to like in this movie. I did enjoy the scene where she zip lines across the entire city, and the last 20 minutes was somewhat exciting. But that may have seemed more exciting because of the dullness that preceded it. Yeah, I'd say you can skip this one.
Friday, March 7, 2014
300: Rise of an Empire - 2 stars
300: Rise of an Empire takes place before, during, and after the events depicted in the movie 300 (2006). The focus is on the Battle of Artemisium, with the Greeks being led by Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and the Persians led by Artemisia (Eva Green).
Gerard Butler doesn't technically appear in this movie, unless you count the few brief scenes from the first movie, seen in the prologue. Stapleton does a pretty good job, but he's not as much fun to watch as Butler was. Luckily, Eva Green is here to pick up the slack.
The scenes with her are the most enjoyable in the movie. Artemisia's back story is her family was killed when she was a young girl, and she was held as a prisoner for many years. Eventually she was freed and adopted by the father of Xerxes, or something like that. As portrayed by Green, she is incredible fierce and ruthless. In one scene, she takes out her sword, cuts off a man's head, then kisses is full on the lips. She also has a very violent sex scene with Themistocles during a brief truce between the two sides. I thought they might kill each other before they finished, and it was the highlight of the movie.
Unfortunately most of the movie is like watching someone else play a video game. The battle scenes consist of mostly the same stuff over and over and it gets dull. It also doesn't help that every sword strike is shown in slow motion, so that we can see the blood slowly fly in our faces.
There is a story here, but it amounts to maybe 10 minutes of screen time. The characters aren't developed enough for me to care about them, and I just got numb to the action. I really just don't care about this movie or what happens to any of the characters.
Gerard Butler doesn't technically appear in this movie, unless you count the few brief scenes from the first movie, seen in the prologue. Stapleton does a pretty good job, but he's not as much fun to watch as Butler was. Luckily, Eva Green is here to pick up the slack.
The scenes with her are the most enjoyable in the movie. Artemisia's back story is her family was killed when she was a young girl, and she was held as a prisoner for many years. Eventually she was freed and adopted by the father of Xerxes, or something like that. As portrayed by Green, she is incredible fierce and ruthless. In one scene, she takes out her sword, cuts off a man's head, then kisses is full on the lips. She also has a very violent sex scene with Themistocles during a brief truce between the two sides. I thought they might kill each other before they finished, and it was the highlight of the movie.
Unfortunately most of the movie is like watching someone else play a video game. The battle scenes consist of mostly the same stuff over and over and it gets dull. It also doesn't help that every sword strike is shown in slow motion, so that we can see the blood slowly fly in our faces.
There is a story here, but it amounts to maybe 10 minutes of screen time. The characters aren't developed enough for me to care about them, and I just got numb to the action. I really just don't care about this movie or what happens to any of the characters.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Non-Stop - 3 stars
Since Taken was released in 2009, Liam Neeson has had a pretty good career as an action hero. The latest example is Non-Stop, in which he plays Bill Marks, a Federal Air Marshall. While on a trans-continental flight over the Atlantic, he receives a text message saying that someone on the flight will be killed every 20 minutes unless a $150 million ransom is paid.
The movie starts out pretty slowly. We know Marks is going through some kind of personal trauma. Before getting on the plane, he sits in his car drinking whiskey and looking sadly at a picture of a little girl. Just to make sure we get the message, the pouring and drinking of the whiskey is done in slow motion. Then we get a few minutes of him moping through the airport, looking gloomy. I wish the movie had sped this up a little. It doesn't take 10 minutes of screen time to tell us he's depressed.
Once the plane is in the air and the text messages start coming in, it gets interesting. This is one of those Agatha Christie, Ten Little Indians type story. A group of people are trapped in a location together and one of them is the killer. The movie goes through the requisite steps to make us suspect different passengers could be the one sending the messages.
Marks keeps coming up with different ideas of how to identify the killer. First he's just watching and questioning people. As he gets more desperate, he makes all the passengers go into coach and put their hands up. From the passengers' point of view, they start to think this crazy Air Marshall is hijacking the plane. Not only that, but the killer wants the money deposited into a Swiss bank account in Marks's name, so even his superiors on the ground start to suspect him.
This is also one of those movies where everything has to work out just perfectly for the bad guy. He had to plan exactly when each step in a series of events would happen. He had to know exactly how and when Marks would act for each step of his plan to work. He has to be Kevin Spacey in Se7en smart.
But despite how ridiculous the story gets, Liam Neeson is entertaining to watch, and the story is fun enough that I was intrigued. I do wish it was a little more fun though. There wasn't any humor in the movie, and while the story is gripping enough to make it enjoyable once, I don't think I would watch it again. A movie needs several good scenes to be re-watchable, and there aren't any specific scenes I remember enjoying. I just enjoyed the movie as a whole.
The supporting cast is fine but wasted. Julianne Moore plays the woman sitting in the seat next to him, and she becomes his deputy or sidekick for a while. Lupita Nyong'o plays a flight attendant, and this must have been filmed before she got all her Oscar buzz for 12 Years a Slave, or they might have given her a line or two. As it is, all she gets to do is stand around and look concerned. No other characters get developed much, which means the reveal of the killer doesn't have the impact it could have had.
Overall, I recommend this movie. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect after seeing the trailer, and it's rarely boring (after you get past that first 10 minutes). It doesn't do anything I haven't seen before, but it does the job.
The movie starts out pretty slowly. We know Marks is going through some kind of personal trauma. Before getting on the plane, he sits in his car drinking whiskey and looking sadly at a picture of a little girl. Just to make sure we get the message, the pouring and drinking of the whiskey is done in slow motion. Then we get a few minutes of him moping through the airport, looking gloomy. I wish the movie had sped this up a little. It doesn't take 10 minutes of screen time to tell us he's depressed.
Once the plane is in the air and the text messages start coming in, it gets interesting. This is one of those Agatha Christie, Ten Little Indians type story. A group of people are trapped in a location together and one of them is the killer. The movie goes through the requisite steps to make us suspect different passengers could be the one sending the messages.
Marks keeps coming up with different ideas of how to identify the killer. First he's just watching and questioning people. As he gets more desperate, he makes all the passengers go into coach and put their hands up. From the passengers' point of view, they start to think this crazy Air Marshall is hijacking the plane. Not only that, but the killer wants the money deposited into a Swiss bank account in Marks's name, so even his superiors on the ground start to suspect him.
This is also one of those movies where everything has to work out just perfectly for the bad guy. He had to plan exactly when each step in a series of events would happen. He had to know exactly how and when Marks would act for each step of his plan to work. He has to be Kevin Spacey in Se7en smart.
But despite how ridiculous the story gets, Liam Neeson is entertaining to watch, and the story is fun enough that I was intrigued. I do wish it was a little more fun though. There wasn't any humor in the movie, and while the story is gripping enough to make it enjoyable once, I don't think I would watch it again. A movie needs several good scenes to be re-watchable, and there aren't any specific scenes I remember enjoying. I just enjoyed the movie as a whole.
The supporting cast is fine but wasted. Julianne Moore plays the woman sitting in the seat next to him, and she becomes his deputy or sidekick for a while. Lupita Nyong'o plays a flight attendant, and this must have been filmed before she got all her Oscar buzz for 12 Years a Slave, or they might have given her a line or two. As it is, all she gets to do is stand around and look concerned. No other characters get developed much, which means the reveal of the killer doesn't have the impact it could have had.
Overall, I recommend this movie. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect after seeing the trailer, and it's rarely boring (after you get past that first 10 minutes). It doesn't do anything I haven't seen before, but it does the job.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
That Awkward Moment - 2 stars
The filmmakers behind That Awkward Moment want us to think this is a chick flick for guys. Well, just because the main characters are guys and the movie has a lot of raunchy humor, that doesn't change the fact that it's still a chick flick. And I don't hate all chick flicks, but most of them require their characters to behave in ways that no rational person would ever behave.
The main characters here are Jason (Zac Efron), Daniel (Miles Teller), and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan). Mikey's wife has just left him, and his friends take him out to a club to try and get him laid. They don't succeed, but they do get themselves laid, which seems to happen every night for them. Jason and Daniel are players, and they each keep a roster of girls. This way, they can rotate through their roster - a different girl every night - until a girl says "So, where is this going?" or something to that effect. That's the point when they tell the girl it isn't working out, and a new girl is added to the roster.
For no good reason, the three friends decide to make a pact to remain single, so they can keep sleeping with different girls and have no responsibilities. This is just stupid. The movie doesn't set this up very well, and what's even dumber is the way the characters stick to this pact. Each of them starts seeing a girl they want to get serious with. Jason starts to really like a girl named Ellie (Imogen Poots), Daniel starts getting serious about his friend Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis), and Mikey manages to get back together with his wife.
There's no way any rational guy would stick to this pact. Each of them would say to the others "Sorry guys, but I changed my mind about that whole single pact thing." The lengths they go to in order to keep their respective relationships secret from their friends make no sense. Daniel even goes so far as to tell Chelsea how his friends reacted when he told them that he was in love, when of course he hasn't said a word to them. And when Ellie comes over to Jason's apartment, interrupting a night of drinking and X-Box, he bends over backwards to convince the other guys that they're just friends, she's not his girlfriend, ect.
So that's the story. If you've ever seen a rom com before, you will see exactly where this story is headed. In every rom com, if one character has a secret, you know the other person will discover this secret at about the hour and ten minute mark. Then there will be a good 10 or 15 minutes where the guy is sad and realizes he screwed up, and then he will apologize and profess his love in the most public place possible. I kept hoping this movie would surprise me and go in a different direction, but no. That was too much to ask.
One problem with this movie is it's being advertised as a comedy. It really isn't. Miles Teller has some funny moments, but there are long stretches without a single laugh. And the story just isn't interesting or compelling enough to make it a good drama. But the biggest problem is just how unlikeable the characters are, especially Jason. It's one thing if a guy doesn't want a relationship and wants to keep having one night stands. But something happens between Ellie and Jason late in the movie that, for me, made his character unforgivable. I was really hoping she would tell him off when he tried to win her back. But the movie wants us to sympathize with him instead of with Ellie. A better actor may have been able to make us sympathize with Jason, but Zac Efron is not up to the task.
In case you couldn't tell, I didn't like this movie.
The main characters here are Jason (Zac Efron), Daniel (Miles Teller), and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan). Mikey's wife has just left him, and his friends take him out to a club to try and get him laid. They don't succeed, but they do get themselves laid, which seems to happen every night for them. Jason and Daniel are players, and they each keep a roster of girls. This way, they can rotate through their roster - a different girl every night - until a girl says "So, where is this going?" or something to that effect. That's the point when they tell the girl it isn't working out, and a new girl is added to the roster.
For no good reason, the three friends decide to make a pact to remain single, so they can keep sleeping with different girls and have no responsibilities. This is just stupid. The movie doesn't set this up very well, and what's even dumber is the way the characters stick to this pact. Each of them starts seeing a girl they want to get serious with. Jason starts to really like a girl named Ellie (Imogen Poots), Daniel starts getting serious about his friend Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis), and Mikey manages to get back together with his wife.
There's no way any rational guy would stick to this pact. Each of them would say to the others "Sorry guys, but I changed my mind about that whole single pact thing." The lengths they go to in order to keep their respective relationships secret from their friends make no sense. Daniel even goes so far as to tell Chelsea how his friends reacted when he told them that he was in love, when of course he hasn't said a word to them. And when Ellie comes over to Jason's apartment, interrupting a night of drinking and X-Box, he bends over backwards to convince the other guys that they're just friends, she's not his girlfriend, ect.
So that's the story. If you've ever seen a rom com before, you will see exactly where this story is headed. In every rom com, if one character has a secret, you know the other person will discover this secret at about the hour and ten minute mark. Then there will be a good 10 or 15 minutes where the guy is sad and realizes he screwed up, and then he will apologize and profess his love in the most public place possible. I kept hoping this movie would surprise me and go in a different direction, but no. That was too much to ask.
One problem with this movie is it's being advertised as a comedy. It really isn't. Miles Teller has some funny moments, but there are long stretches without a single laugh. And the story just isn't interesting or compelling enough to make it a good drama. But the biggest problem is just how unlikeable the characters are, especially Jason. It's one thing if a guy doesn't want a relationship and wants to keep having one night stands. But something happens between Ellie and Jason late in the movie that, for me, made his character unforgivable. I was really hoping she would tell him off when he tried to win her back. But the movie wants us to sympathize with him instead of with Ellie. A better actor may have been able to make us sympathize with Jason, but Zac Efron is not up to the task.
In case you couldn't tell, I didn't like this movie.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Sundance Review: The Signal - 1 star
This is one of those movies that might have worked as a short, but not as a feature length movie. It's about three college students. The movie doesn't give them much of a backstory. I'm not sure what they're studying or where they go to school (they might have mentioned it and I missed it), but they are on some kind of road trip. It seems the server at their school was hacked, and they were blamed for it. Now they're going to track down the hacker who was responsible.
Once they get into the desert, something happens and they pass out, or something like that. They wake up in some kind of a government research facility. Were they abducted by aliens, and now the government is trying to figure out what happened to them? Or are they on the ship now and the doctors are aliens?
Lots of interesting ideas in this movie, but the script is just a mess. The first act bored me because the movie hadn't given me any reason to care about these characters. Once they incident in the desert happens, I was intrigued for about 10 minutes. Then the movie has nowhere to go. Eventually they escape and things get even stranger.
There's nothing wrong with a movie disorienting us and making us put the pieces together ourselves. But this movie is nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is. It really needed a couple of rewrites by someone who understands how to do this kind of science fiction without boring the audience.
The only thing the movie has going for it is Laurence Fishburne. But the filmmakers seem to think that giving him lots of exposition will remind us of The Matrix. His voice is hypnotic and I was reminded of Morpheus, but the more I listened to him I realized that the screenwriters were reaching beyond their grasp.
I hated this movie.
Once they get into the desert, something happens and they pass out, or something like that. They wake up in some kind of a government research facility. Were they abducted by aliens, and now the government is trying to figure out what happened to them? Or are they on the ship now and the doctors are aliens?
Lots of interesting ideas in this movie, but the script is just a mess. The first act bored me because the movie hadn't given me any reason to care about these characters. Once they incident in the desert happens, I was intrigued for about 10 minutes. Then the movie has nowhere to go. Eventually they escape and things get even stranger.
There's nothing wrong with a movie disorienting us and making us put the pieces together ourselves. But this movie is nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is. It really needed a couple of rewrites by someone who understands how to do this kind of science fiction without boring the audience.
The only thing the movie has going for it is Laurence Fishburne. But the filmmakers seem to think that giving him lots of exposition will remind us of The Matrix. His voice is hypnotic and I was reminded of Morpheus, but the more I listened to him I realized that the screenwriters were reaching beyond their grasp.
I hated this movie.
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