Needs Much More Than It Was Given.
A seedy production throughout, not helped by a manifest lack of funding, this unrefined attempt at making a cyberpunk noir film relates events in an unrevealed future when, in a locale referred to as The Hemisphere (and sometimes as The Zone), it is illegal to view television or movies, including those on video tape, thereby naturally causing a thriving market in bootleg recordings. Billy Zane portrays a member of the Media Police, Raymond Palinov, selected by the "CKS" (Internal Security) to infiltrate into a neighbouring city-state called Megaville wherein "media" is legal, in an ostensible attempt to assist in discouraging the continuance of a conduit of media products into the Hemisphere, and who has been recipient of a remote control transmitter installed in his brain, from which he will receive instructions from the CKS head, played by Daniel J. Travanti. There is a good deal of raw material here for application of satire, but the work is poorly written, directed and executed, with bafflement rampant as to what is transpiring during a majority of scenes, while poor Zane, charismatic under strong direction, is permitted in this instance his full range of fey mannerisms, and with contemporary street scenes of the Los Angeles Civic Center dolefully failing to impress as a future anything, at all.
- rsoonsa
- Jul 28, 2003