Um... Wow... You know the saying "So bad it's good"? I'm not sure this counts. The acting in this movie was so bad. Sure, there were some great lines that had me dying of laughter, but I am pretty sure laughter wasn't what was intended. The greatest line in the movie is as follows:
"I want room service! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000 a night hooker! I want my shirts laundered. like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."
Or the cyborg Jesus Assassin: "It's Jesus Time!", "Come to Jesus.",
Oh who am I kidding, this movie was fantastically bad. I loved hating every second of it.
The sets and costumes were legitimately really good. Even the characters were great for the story though they were executed very poorly. One moment toward the end someone had a sword pulled on Johnny and I asked Kelly how she would feel if Johnny got killed right then with the sword. Her response: "Meh..." And that's basically how I felt the entire time. after the great suspense of the first scene I didn't really care where the movie was going to take me as long as I could see more cyberpunk weirdness that is William Gibson. If you can make it through the first hour of the movie you will be rewarded with the finest cyborg dolphin you ever did see.
So I'll start off by saying that this movie could have been great.
As David mentioned, the sets and costumes were good for the most part (has a good aesthetic feel to it). There we a lot of concepts that I think were fun and original like cyborg Jesus, cyborg Dolphin, the virtual boy style VR internet, the concept of carrying data packages in an implant in your brain, all instant sci-fi classics.
The story could have been interesting and compelling had it been executed correctly, but that is where this movie falls flat completely... Execution.
This movie does not do a whole lot right in my opinion. It felt like someone wrote some good ideas and concepts down on a pizza box, and then had no idea how to make them fit together.
The most obvious weakness is quite noticeable from the start, the acting. First of all, no one person in this movie does a particularly good job of acting. Most of it is so bad it is laughable. The icing on the cake is that most of the supporting roles do a better job of it than the main protagonist himself.
Another problem is something the movie couldn't really avoid to be fair, but the technology just doesn't hold up today, especially if you are an enthusiast who understands basic programming and how hardware and software interface with each other.
Those things aside, the reason I had trouble enjoying this movie was the story and character interactions. I wanted to like it, but as it went on I found myself less and less interested. Part of that can be blamed on the bad acting.
The movie does try to make you connect with the main character (Johnny) to an extent. For example you find out he had to make a certain sacrifice to have the implant in his head that holds data, which I think is supposed to make you empathize with him, but he explains it with almost no emotion and doesn't seem to care, so you don't either. Several people die basically as collateral damage for being in the same place Johnny is at the wrong time, and no one really seems to care. Johnny continually proves that he is kind of a dick and is only looking out for himself, especially once you find out what data he is carrying and his reaction to it. Then he really puts the scumbag nail in the coffin when he says the wonderful line David quoted in his review, which is ironically one of the only decent displays of acting from him in the entire move because you can actually feel a pinch of emotion. Miraculously, after whining about wanting to go back to his privileged life like an overgrown child in a suit, his female counterpart cozies up to him which left me completely disgusted. Of course, they seem to fall in love which comes out of no where and has no grounds other than that they have spend some time together, killed some people, and watched some others die, how romantic. And that is basically the story of this movie in a nutshell. Things kind of just happen, there is no flow to the story, Johnny regularly reminds you that he is not a likable character, and then at the end everything just kind of works out for him specifically... He is cured, the girl is cured, he gets the girl, saves the world, etc., and then it kind of just ends abruptly.
In summary despite my negative review I am glad I watched the movie. There were parts of it that were interesting and honestly if it were remade today with a more cohesive plot line and an A list cast, it could probably be a pretty killer movie similar to Blade Runner. Alas, we are left with this steaming pile of garbage, and I would not watch it a second time.
Um... Wow...
ReplyDeleteYou know the saying "So bad it's good"? I'm not sure this counts. The acting in this movie was so bad. Sure, there were some great lines that had me dying of laughter, but I am pretty sure laughter wasn't what was intended. The greatest line in the movie is as follows:
"I want room service! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000 a night hooker! I want my shirts laundered. like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."
Or the cyborg Jesus Assassin:
"It's Jesus Time!",
"Come to Jesus.",
Oh who am I kidding, this movie was fantastically bad. I loved hating every second of it.
The sets and costumes were legitimately really good. Even the characters were great for the story though they were executed very poorly. One moment toward the end someone had a sword pulled on Johnny and I asked Kelly how she would feel if Johnny got killed right then with the sword. Her response: "Meh..." And that's basically how I felt the entire time. after the great suspense of the first scene I didn't really care where the movie was going to take me as long as I could see more cyberpunk weirdness that is William Gibson. If you can make it through the first hour of the movie you will be rewarded with the finest cyborg dolphin you ever did see.
This was a wonderfully bad movie.
3/10 will quote again.
So I'll start off by saying that this movie could have been great.
ReplyDeleteAs David mentioned, the sets and costumes were good for the most part (has a good aesthetic feel to it). There we a lot of concepts that I think were fun and original like cyborg Jesus, cyborg Dolphin, the virtual boy style VR internet, the concept of carrying data packages in an implant in your brain, all instant sci-fi classics.
The story could have been interesting and compelling had it been executed correctly, but that is where this movie falls flat completely... Execution.
This movie does not do a whole lot right in my opinion. It felt like someone wrote some good ideas and concepts down on a pizza box, and then had no idea how to make them fit together.
The most obvious weakness is quite noticeable from the start, the acting. First of all, no one person in this movie does a particularly good job of acting. Most of it is so bad it is laughable. The icing on the cake is that most of the supporting roles do a better job of it than the main protagonist himself.
Another problem is something the movie couldn't really avoid to be fair, but the technology just doesn't hold up today, especially if you are an enthusiast who understands basic programming and how hardware and software interface with each other.
Those things aside, the reason I had trouble enjoying this movie was the story and character interactions. I wanted to like it, but as it went on I found myself less and less interested. Part of that can be blamed on the bad acting.
The movie does try to make you connect with the main character (Johnny) to an extent. For example you find out he had to make a certain sacrifice to have the implant in his head that holds data, which I think is supposed to make you empathize with him, but he explains it with almost no emotion and doesn't seem to care, so you don't either. Several people die basically as collateral damage for being in the same place Johnny is at the wrong time, and no one really seems to care. Johnny continually proves that he is kind of a dick and is only looking out for himself, especially once you find out what data he is carrying and his reaction to it. Then he really puts the scumbag nail in the coffin when he says the wonderful line David quoted in his review, which is ironically one of the only decent displays of acting from him in the entire move because you can actually feel a pinch of emotion. Miraculously, after whining about wanting to go back to his privileged life like an overgrown child in a suit, his female counterpart cozies up to him which left me completely disgusted. Of course, they seem to fall in love which comes out of no where and has no grounds other than that they have spend some time together, killed some people, and watched some others die, how romantic. And that is basically the story of this movie in a nutshell. Things kind of just happen, there is no flow to the story, Johnny regularly reminds you that he is not a likable character, and then at the end everything just kind of works out for him specifically... He is cured, the girl is cured, he gets the girl, saves the world, etc., and then it kind of just ends abruptly.
In summary despite my negative review I am glad I watched the movie. There were parts of it that were interesting and honestly if it were remade today with a more cohesive plot line and an A list cast, it could probably be a pretty killer movie similar to Blade Runner. Alas, we are left with this steaming pile of garbage, and I would not watch it a second time.
3/10