MK Ultra: Controlando Mentes

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.

In the 60's, the CIA is conducting mind control experiments using LSD. Dr. Ford Strauss (Anson Mount) is recruited by CIA agent Galvin Morgan (Jason Patric) to run experiments at a small Mississippi clinic. Rose (Jaime Ray Newman) is Ford's wife.

The style is faux documentary. It doesn't have much of a story flow. It's basically a lot of individual scenes of Ford's life and his experiments. It's trying for realism. There are a few interesting ideas and scenes. The transgender patient is most interesting. Mostly, it's rather dull until the last act explodes into gun violence. Through that whole section, I am most intrigued by Anson Mount and Jason Patric's similar looks. That's not a good thing. I don't find their struggle that compelling.

I like Anson Mount, as well as Jason Patrick (which, BTW, I didn't recognize until I looked at the cast). The subject is also one that has enormous significance: CIA special programs to experiment with LSD and other substances in order to break the human will and make tools out of people. The acting was good, too, from all of the people involved. The problem was the plot, going from creepy to boring and back again without an actual reason. And if that wasn't confusing enough, it was interlaced with old documentary footage.

In the end, it felt like the movie did not know what it wanted to be: a thriller, a horror, a drama, a documentary. I didn't dislike the film, but I wouldn't recommend it.

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.

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.