Anon

I watched this with no particular expectation about the story, and I haven't seen "Black Mirror." Two of my favorite actors, Clive Owen and Colm Feore star in it - I'm one of those old-fashioned people who follows the actors or director.

"Anon" takes place some time in the future, where no one has any privacy, where everyone's history is instantly available, everyone's memories are recorded and can be viewed.

Detective Sal Frieland becomes intrigued as he investigates a series of murders and sees a young woman on the street who has no data. The murders are traced to a message board where people go to contact a hacker who can erase something in their record. Could this woman be killing her clients? He goes undercover to hire her and find out her identity.

Amanda Seyfried plays the woman, Anon, and she looks completely different as a brunette. The film is interestingly photographed - in kind of gray tones with lots of strange camera angles.

I found it an interesting concept and enjoyed the film.

I think some people were looking in the wrong place for a movie this one isnt. It's a sci-fi movie, not of the action, space rocket variety. People are talking subdued because that sets the desired mood. Clive looking bored is Clive playing the role as a depressed man who doesn't have to be Al Pacino. Slow pacing? How about creating tension, instead to racing around chasing people. I call it a movie that takes its time and lets you digest it. If you want an action movie go somewhere else.

It's a world where everybody's POV is being recorded and accessed through a vast database called The Ether. Solving crimes has become easy for police investigator Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) until a series of killings where all the recordings have been hacked and corrupted. Charles Gattis (Colm Feore) is his supervisor. Suspicion falls on a mysterious woman (Amanda Seyfried) who is able to erase her image from the database.

This is pure old fashion sci-fi. It's been stripped down. There are no car chases. Even the sets are unadorned which makes sense when one's vision can be altered anyways. This is reminiscent of reading an old sci-fi story. It's a fascinating world but only for true sci-fi fans. It's a black and white movie in a world of color. The thrills are drained from it but one can see it. There is one section where Sal's vision is being constantly corrupted which could have been a great CGI action sequence. Although I wouldn't likely to accept it since the audience knows it to be a fake. This will divide the audience between those who like old sci-fi stories from those who like action sci-fi.

So let me start off by saying that I understand the film had its problems, but I still enjoyed it, and if you really don't have anything better to watch, then this is a good time-killer. So the idea is neat, people have brain implants connected to the eyes like a cyborg, and someone hacks it, changing reality to become anonymous. And while this idea is very cool and was interesting for about 45 to 50 minutes, but I feel like this would have made a better short film, because that idea is mostly all they have and its drawn out, the techy tricks only go so far. I like the actors in this one like Seyfied and Owen, and they did a moderately serviceable job in their roles. The first few hacker tricks are neat but it gets old after a while, and I found myself waiting for the ending. I felt the film drags on pulling out the same old trick. But thats just my opinion.

So as I said, I like the tricks and special effects involved, but that was truly the only thing I really LIKED. Everything else was average or above average at most. The acting was fine, considering it had some respected actors in it. The cinematography outside the special effects and what not was also very average, nothing to be amazed at like certain genius cinematographers. Honestly it wasn't a fantastic film, but it also wasn't terrible and 1 star like some people are saying, I enjoyed MOST of it, kind of got bored towards the end, but the first couple of tricks were fun, and I'll give them that.

For a sci-fi movie I thought Anon was a refreshing movie, with a to me totally new concept, a story that I haven't seen before. And not only I haven't seen it before but it was also good and entertaining, so I really don't get why you would score this movie with a low rating. It had everything you want when watching a sci-fi, nice futuristic concept, a good intriguing story, and a good cast. Clive Owen and Amanda Seyfried, as well as the rest of the cast, made this movie enjoyable to watch. It doesn't have alot of special effects and CGI's but it doesn't really have to, because the story itself stands on it's own and doesn't need any of that. I had a good time and I don't care about the negative reviewers.