Paranoia

source: Paranoia

Surveillance from Super Corps and the Government is very Today. There is much angst and tension to be explored in the context of Headlines and vilification of those nasty 1%ers. But there isn't any sense to that here in this dull peek at behind the Scenes at Smart Phone Headquarters. Many years ago Critic Roger Ebert coined the term "Obligatory Musical Interlude", a new cliché that had found its way into Movies. It is when things just stop and a Pop Song appears on the Soundtrack for the Actors to Kiss, or Dance or something that happens on Screen that are merely images to let the Song play out. It was a sign of a Bad Movie or at best a Mediocre Movie that resorted to such yuckiness. This Movie has that and even more pedestrian pandering and in a supposed Thriller. These are Instant Death. Pretty People are fine in a Film, but boring is not. So here it is that and the thing plays out like some sort of commentary on Modern Times. But the sophomoric sinks it from its Yale and Cyber Jargon name dropping aspirations into the realm of High School Geekdom.

I am reasonably certain most people have not heard about this little film, even with its star packed cast. What a lot of folks don't know is that August is often considered a death slot for the summer season. This is where studios send movies to die that they have little faith in. Schools are coming back in session, last minute summer vacations and just the dog days of summer keep people away from the theatres by comparison to the May, June and July releases. Studios will spend less time marketing, with rare exceptions, anything in August and if something sells its a blessing to them more than anything else. Why do I tell you all this? Because it's clear to me this is how the studio felt about this movie. A director (Robert Luketic) best known for his mostly unsuccessful comedy work such as Legally Blonde, the Ugly Truth and Killers was given what should be a high tension corporate espionage thriller. Odd match right? The movie shows it as well with a definite lack of finesse and technique through and through. Nearly every twist and turn is telegraphed a mile away by anyone paying the closest bit of attention. Because of that moments that should have you wondering what will happen next you already have the answer. Ultimately the movies greatest sin is a lack of consequences for actions. Sure the big bad pays, but there are other elements to the film that should not be tied up as neatly like a Christmas present. That isn't to say this is a bad movie folks. It sounds it, but it's not bad. Bad is reserved for the equally uninspired World War Z. This film has the benefit of a relatively strong and motivated cast that I didn't feel was going through the motions. It's a testament to the actors natural ability that they could do what they did with what they had to work with. Liam Hemsworth (Thors little brother, yes he is as cute) plays Adam Cassidy a young technician for a multi million dollar cellular company. He is up to his eyes in bills paying for his sick father (Richard Dreyfuss). He is offered the proverbial golden goose by his boss played by the eternally awesome Gary Oldman; who per normal puts all his passion, his accents and his ability to blend into any role he does into the part. All Adam has to do for his boss is fake being a successful executive in a rival company to steal ideas from them. The owner of the other company is played by an oddly shorn Harrison Ford who felt that he needed to go toe to toe with Oldman in the acting department. Thankfully he is more than capable of keeping up, though once or twice I wanted him to yell Get off my plane. The supporting cast is surprisingly talent and believable in their roles. Amber Heard as the love interest, Lucas Till as the geekier best friend, Julian McMahon as the wanna be heavy (the weakest of the supporting) and Losts Josh Holloway as an FBI agent. There are some twists, but as I said before most if not all of them are telegraphed long in advance. The pacing is off the entire film however keeping you just off balance enough that it is awkward more than tension building. TL;DR Paranoia isn't going to be a summer sleeper, but you may fall asleep watching it. Save this one for the DVD or TV you aren't missing anything.

The only thing this movie has going for it is the 2 ruthless CEOs (Harrison Ford & Gary Oldman) and getting to look at Baby Thor's girl Amber Heard for 1-1/2 hours. Aside from the LAME characters, predictable plot and bad acting from Liam, there is also a constant Occupy-wall st under-tone to this movie. That was actually the most entertaining part, getting to watch the left's version of what they think a capitalist is. Ford and Oldman, 2 evil white men who have raped and pillaged their way to the top, despite being billionaires, are outsmarted by Liam's punk-self. Yea OK Hollywood. The only satisfaction attained was knowing that these far-left based movies keep tanking. What do they expect with some half-wit pretty boy, stupid plot and a political bias from the start?

This movie has such a lame and dated story it deserved to flop. Despite having such a top notch cast. It feels like a B movie from the early 80s. What were they thinking? A young tech employee is forced into spying on a rival company and going to work there. There are too many plot absurdities to list. In the end it just came down to some simple bugging here and there. What dumb CEOs. The way Embeth Davidtz's character was brought down was so weak. The way they were threatening the main character to do the deed was so out of proportion. He wasn't even some kind of trained spy - how could they expect him to surmount such a sophisticated security system? Total rubbish. Harrison Ford looks too old and out of breath for a great CEO. Gary Oldman's strange cockney accent is comical and out of place. Their scenes together are so Grumpy Old Men. The lovely Amber Heard with a more intelligent brunette hair color than usual is given such a weak character to play - out of place in this century. Liam Hemsworth isn't right for the role. Tech nerds don't look like that. Even though she is finally paired with someone her own age on screen, their romance is unconvincing. Poor Richard Dreyfuss - his character sums up the state of this dud. This was plain and simple a waste of time and should not have been made into a movie with such a lame simplistic and unoriginal story.

First things first: Lukatic is a mediocre director. I enjoyed "21" and "Legally BLonde" as light entertainment. There's no reason to expect "Paranoia" to be anything else. And it isn't. Overall, the movie is on part with "21" and that's the best that can be said. "Paranoia" starts off nicely and builds up to a point where it could go anywhere and in a spectacular way. Sure, all those possibilities are predictable but many are also enjoyable. Yet, the movie, all of a sudden, decides to go nowhere. It stays between a very shallow message against today's social media, an anti-privacy warning and an outcome that is thoroughly predictable, but not in a nice way. To me, it seems absolutely equal with the big uninteresting flop that "Now You See Me" was. We have the same drive to appear smart and overexplain things in a manner that manages t debunk itself and show that under all the glitter the emperor is naked. In "Now you See me", the glitter was cheap "wit". Here, we have the wasted skills of Oldman and Ford. However, I'll take Oldman and Ford any day.

A thriller about the dark world of tech business giants, with big shot start like Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, what could go wrong, right? Well, with this movie, almost everything did. It's slow, boring, repetitive and overall just disappointing. Adam (Liam Hensworth) is a programmer (I think, because character development apparently wasn't a priority in this movie) who gets stuck in the middle of a feud between two tech giants, Wyatt and Goddard, played by Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford. And that's about as deep as the story goes. There's some background as to the rivalry between Wyatt and Goddard and a hard-to-believe love story between Adam and one of Goddard's executives, but overall, the film feels like an unfinished job, with a lot of potential, but no real charm to it. I've got to accept the movie has some good things worth mentioning. Gary Oldman is great, as expected, in his limited screen time, and the final scenes are actually pretty good, but all in all this was not a good movie, and I would not recommend it.

In the history of horses and excrement , a bigger pile of horse related excrement has not been seen in a long long time. OK, that's not entirely true and goes directly to screenplay department. Shallow and stupid, borderline idiotic script. From beginning to an end - it's all implausible crap that doesn't make any sense. The end is so stupid it just hurts. Trying to make us to believe that the government will shut down the equivalent of Microsoft and Apple together.... please. Whoever wrote this should write tampon commercials at best. Garry Oldman, Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss - feel so sorry for them to be a part of this, they are excellent actors and did a great job. So did Amber Heard. Liam Hemsworth is as good for the role of brilliant tech developer as Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of Stephen Hawking. He should stick to modelling suits, that's the only thing he did well in this movie. Was bad even for watching it on a flight, red eye, in a economy class.

So you know how Swiss cheese is full of holes?? That is exactly what you will be tasting if you are going to watch this movie. We basically with comments above (poor acting except Ford and Oldman, below standard story plot, empty dialogs, etc...). We just wanted to point out how so many parts in the movie lack logic and basic common sense. For example: Example 1: Adam gets completely drunk and wakes up freshly groomed with his hair are perfectly combed, and no hangover whatsoever the next morning. Really?? Example 2: If there are cameras in his Adam's dad's house, how come Wyatt did not see that the FBI came to the house and heard the conversation? Example 3: He's in bed sleeping and while Emma goes take a shower, he quickly gets up to steal Emma's files from her computer... And he has the time to put on pants?? When the plan is to run back into bed for when she comes out of the shower? Example 4: Towards the end, after Adam steals Emma's phone and fingerprint to rob Eikon Occura, how did Emma get into his apartment? He sure didn't give his keys away.... Example 5: how in the world did he have Goddard's sports car as a "rental" after his whole ordeal with the FBI? Did he have money to throw away when he still had to pay for his dad's hospital bills? Or did those fly away just like the logic of this movie... The biggest question is: why on earth would Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman decide to join the cast? Money, money or money? The second biggest question is: what man walks around with one hand in his pocket? Does he think this is Project Runway?

"Privacy. Absolute myth. There's no such thing." The film starts off on the wrong foot and never manages to get on track. In the very opening scene you have Liam Hemsworth using voice over narration explaining to us what we are about to see, and you realize that you are going to watch a clichéd unoriginal action thriller. Then there is a scene where Gary Oldman's character is looking at some art pieces with Liam and he mentions how Picasso once said that there are no original ideas, that everything is either copied or stolen. You kind of get a sense of a similar thing going on with this script. Paranoia is an action thriller that seems recycled with no fresh ideas and unfortunately lacks thrills. The script was adapted by Jason Dean Hall (Spread) and Barry Levy (Vantage Point) from Joseph Finder's novel, but nothing about it feels inspiring or original. It is a shame because I was excited to get to see Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman face off once again, but Paranoia easily belongs on my worst films of 2013 list mainly because these talented actors can't do anything to improve a weak script. Paranoia gets half a star for Amber Heard who looks stunning despite not adding anything to the story, and another star for Oldman and Ford's presence alone. I could forgive the uninspiring script if at least this technological thriller actually had some thrills, but it doesn't. There aren't any interesting thrills either and the narrative is pretty straight forward and predictable. Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) has been working for an important technological company known as Wyatt Corporation for the past six years. He hasn't been able to ascend the corporate ladder the way he pictured it as he continues to be an entry level employee, but he and his team are expecting a break through when given the opportunity to present their next project to the boss, Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman). The presentation doesn't go as planned and Adam is left unemployed along with the rest of his team. Feeling bad about the way things turned out, Adam invites them to a fancy club where they use the company's credit card. The next day Adam is called back to Wyatt's office as he is confronted for his crime. Taking advantage of Adam's hunger for wealth and power, Wyatt recruits him to spy on his nemesis: Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford). Goddard happens to run another billion dollar tech company which is his biggest competition. Wyatt wants Adam to win Jock's trust and discover what they are working on, and in return he promises him the life he has always dreamed of. Blinded by greed Adam accepts and soon will find himself way in over his head. Richard Dreyfuss has a small role in this film as well and his presence only reminds us that a film focusing on him or the other secondary characters such as Oldman and Ford, would be so much better. Instead they allow Hemsworth to play the lead role and he simply doesn't have that on screen charisma to carry a film on his own. I don't think he's a bad actor, but he needs stronger material to keep the audience's interest. He is just outclassed in this film by the other talented actors and we are left out wanting to see more of them. Another issue I had with Paranoia is that the plot doesn't make much sense and it is so dull that it allows you to begin to think too much about it and find all sort of holes. Robert Luketic has just directed his third straight flop after the disappointing Killers and The Ugly Truth. I will defend him for 21, which was a film that at least kept me entertained, but his latest efforts have been really disappointing. Paranoia might just top them all; stay away from this film.