MK Ultra

Started out promising. But quickly showed no actual plot. Sadly it could have been good ..... the end was so unbelievable. This was just a total loss on where it seemed like the movie was going. I thought you were going to see some crazy studies done, which psychedelic drugs and behavior said they caused. Then next thing you know people are out of the study you don't even know why. You don't get to see what happens to people in the study, weird scenes with the guy and his wife. It's literally all over the place and nowhere at the same time. By the time you get to the end he realized how much time you wasted watching this movie.

What would you do, the CIA have approached you, to make some tests on people's minds, to discover and to find, if control can be acquired, of their thoughts and their desires, make them act against their will, to satisfy and to fulfil, the less well-off are your patients, some don't make a lot of sense, but they'll do what they are told, let's see if science can remould.

A far from engaging tale (quite dull in fact) of the abuse dealt out to those less well off in the 1960s by those in authority in order to find out how they might be able to control a person's mind, change their behaviour and make them do things against their will.

I like the lead actor that plays the doctor; this was a gimmick and I feel for it.

This is not just low budget. You can do a lot with a short changed budget. Even in the opening; there should not have just been a 1:1 old video playing. There were no effects used; not even a ken burns effect or something. The CIA guy has huge nose hairs coming up from pretending to snort cocaine. This is super obvious against a light colored background. NOBODY looked at this film after it was put in the can. The lighting is terrible in every indoor scene and the shadows are not managed at all.

FIFTEEN MINUTES IN... I had to hit the ejector button. I am not going to waste my time watching a movie that was not worth a second look to the people that made the dang thing.

MK Ultra was a top secret US government program to test mind control techniques on people.

The words secret and test are the key there.

Lots of the MK Ultra program was voluntary (still kind of appalling), but this film focuses on something that always happens when you make things secret and throw money at it. You get abuses by the type of person attracted to acting out their worst fantasies.

Without giving away spoilers, the Dr Strauss (Anson Mount) is genuine in his desire to research whether LSD can help those with mental illness, addictions etc. He struggles to get funding. A benefactor shows up and Strauss slowly begins to realise his mistake.

Thankfully the film relies on showing not telling. It lets you try to work out what's happening. The result is an intense, grubby and depressing look at the darker parts of the MK Ultra story.

One criticism is that the beginning has a scene linking the program to race. The rest of the film is obvious that it wasn't about race. No-one was spared - MK Ultra even preyed on their own CIA agents. The scene was a cheap addition and the film is better than that. Also, the film kind of skips over the role Doctors played in the outright abuses of MK Ultra. The doctor here tries to correct his mistake. The real ones were quite happy to benefit.

Just like many of the worst excesses in human history, doctors (who should know better) involved themselves in the MK Ultra abuses in full knowledge of what was being done.

Should you watch it? Yes. While you're at it... look up the facts of MK Ultra. It's not a conspiracy theory. Lots of conspiracy nonsense was built around it, but the program itself and the abuses that went along with it were very real.

Started off good, then sadly dived into a similar turf to canninbal holocaust showing us grim sexual, physical and mental torture.

You'd be better off reading Wikipedia to get the jist of the illegal program of MK Ultra than watch this boring, cult-like movie. The movie jumps around in places from 1 scene to another, then quickly snaps back to another torture type scene.

The psychiatrist appears to be shocked and bewildered the entire movie which is really irksome.

I wouldn't waste 90mins watching this movie, as I mentioned, there are plenty of sources on what MK Ultra achieved and conducted.