storyguy

Okay, in spite of what some of the other reviews may tell you, this is basically a really bad movie. But it is blessed with some features that make it sporadically fascinating in spite of its frequent bouts of ineptitude. First of all, the cast is not good. Some of the acting is painfully wooden, particularly from the leading lady. To give them their due, they've been handed some very stiff and unnatural dialogue. The best members of the cast clearly did some ad-libbing rather than stick to the clunky text.

It's also poorly directed and edited. This has nothing to do with the fact that it needs some significant restoration. It's also obvious that it was done on a shoestring budget, but that can't excuse all of its technical and artistic flaws. There is one scene where the camera attempts a simple maneuver, but then chops off the tops of the actors' heads and then jerkily and belatedly returns to a more workable composition. The script is an interesting mess -- very slow and dull in spots, but then weirdly non-linear and unpredictable in others. I couldn't tell if it was an early attempt at a Rashomon or Pulp Fiction- like experiment, or if it was merely disjointed and awkward. Perhaps a little of both.

But it's interesting for a few other reasons, one of which is the excellent musical interlude around the midpoint, when the leading lady visits a speakeasy. Willie "The Lion" Smith is among the performers, and the music is terrific. Surprisingly, the technical quality of the soundtrack is not bad.

I also liked it for some of its fairly raw explanation of the race relations of the era. It's quite up front about the fact that blacks are second-class citizens, and everyone agrees that a black man who turns to the police for any sort of help is basically a chump. None of the many slicker and better movies of the era would have been so blunt about these sorts of things.

Anyway, it's good weird fun to watch, if you can get past the dullest scenes (the endless sequence between the boss at the chemical plant and the watchman he bribes comes to mind). Some of the bad acting is hilarious enough to be worth the effort.

This is a shockingly bad feature film, considering the budget and talent involved. The sci-fi dystopia it portrays is unbelievable and poorly explained. The economics of the world are downright absurd. But even if you don't care about that, it features an endless parade of actors doing their darnedest to be non-emotive and devoid of personality.

The premise seems to have been used as an excuse to put together an ensemble of pretty 20-somethings, who are working hard in every single scene to be sultry and jaded. Sultry and jaded are okay for a 30-second perfume ad, but they don't work so well to keep us involved through two hours of sci-fi clichés.

Cillian Murphy's relentless policeman is perhaps the most inadequately explained character. We're never provided with any motive for his determination to prop up an outrageously inhumane and plainly unsustainable regime -- except perhaps that, well, he's been doing it for a long time now, so, I guess he, like, feels some sort of force of habit or something.

Timberlake and Seyfried have shown signs of real talent in other productions. But any such talent has been carefully hidden under wraps here. Like everyone else, they come across as sullen, slow-witted and drab.

The second star was awarded only because the movie makes some amusing use of various locations in Los Angeles -- with a weird cameo from the casino in Monte Carlo -- and because I liked the way the production designer enjoyed remaking ugly cars from the '70s as high-style vehicles of the future.