NOTE: Known as Brainstorm in some territories.
What would happen if the James Bond and Matrix franchises collided?
Well, something a bit like this, I suspect.
The plot:
Set in an indeterminate time period, an office worker is tired of the tedium in his life. Middle of the road, mid-salary, middling prospects, his life takes a sudden turn for the unexpected when, almost unbidden, he is plunged headlong into the murky world of corporate espionage. Daunted but determined, he dutifully carries out his instructions, attending mind-numbing seminars about cheese and sewage and skirting boards, he 'activates' a device in his pocket; a listening device.
Slowly getting to grips with his new life, another unforeseen happening: Lucy Liu appears and tells him that the espionage he is conducting is in fact a lie, that the transmitter device doesn't even do anything and that he is a pawn in a game he doesn't even know is being played.
What's a man to do?
Part espionage movie, part sci-fi, the mood here is quite out there. With a trippy-dippy soundtrack, odd camera angles and awkward, stilted conversations on screen for the most part, this does its very best to unsettle the viewer, and it certainly achieves it.
The performance of Jeremy Northam as male lead Morgan Sullivan is rock solid, perfectly capturing the bewilderment of his predicament.
Relatively unknown, this one may have been a bit too deep for the multiplexes, which is a shame as it stands head and shoulders above ninety nine percent of the guff out there.
Genuinely hard to find a flaw.
5 out of 5
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