This is an old-school paranoia thriller, with just enough near future sci fi for fun. Think an Outer Limits episode. it is mostly well written, Cage and his main charges are quite decent in it, and the supporting cast (control room workers, the gas station attendant...) are good to excellent. Unlikely characters like the mountain man (and his clan) are, somehow, entirely believable. Sets and locations outside the big shiny city are very nice.
The main sin it commits is thinking it's more than it is. A good example is right up front, and I suspect why a lot of people watched a few minutes then turned it off. There's a simply horrible visual effect of a drone that buzzes the car. For, no reason at all. It added nothing to the film, but was so badly done (poor quality shot, and the drone acts unlike a real one would or could) that it makes the movie look like a third rate 1990s video game.
Secondary sins are overly bad baddies. This would have worked better if the agency he worked for was more bureaucratic, indeed even boring. Fewer empty concrete rooms, and more wood paneled conference rooms and worn out cubicle farms. Same for the whole city generally, especially as they drive old cars because (they say in the film) there are no new ones. Most specifically for bad guys, Hugh Dillon was way too arch, a caricature of himself, the very definition of scenery chewing. Even if restrained, bald eyepatch is a bit too on the nose for our hero's former best friend; he's just The Baddie, and it's too trite to be easily looked past.
But overall quite decent. Not great. A bit too predictable-but so was "Time Enough at Last" and it's a classic!-and a bit too cheaply done but when looked at as a B movie, not bad at all.
