A brilliant, ambitious failure.
Looking back at this movie from the perspective of 13 years in the future, you can see what the writers and the director were trying to achieve, and, simulataneously, how far they fell short.
The contradictions make it interesting.
The LA of this 1999 looks like a kindler, gentler American occupied Baghdad. It seems to be occupied by a foreign army, and yet nobody seems to get killed. The city is in a constant state of riot, and yet it's supposed to be an earth shattering moment when some people (after watching for almost a minute) finally attack some riot cops who are beating up a black woman in front of their eyes. There's a powerful sense of the apocalyptic and yet in the end all it turns out to be is a few rogue cops (a few bad apples) trying to cover up a police murder.
The concept of experiencing someone else's brainwaves could have been a cheesy gimmick and yet it's the strongest part of the movie, especially the scene where the prositute is murdered and forced to watch her own death from the point of view of the murderer. That in a way sums up the brainwashed, cable news saturated, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News dominated American people of today. The government in the process of murdering American civil society brainwashed the American people out of their own point of view and into the point of view of their oppressers. The constant bombardment of triviality in the media erases the individual and the ability of the individual to see things through his/her own eyes.
And then there's the tape. We're told it's a "lightening bolt from god" but is it? Jeriko One seems more like an obnoxious jerk than a messiah. Would a character of that kind of influence really have been dumb enough to mouth off to the cops while he's on his knees in a back ally and while the cops had their guns trained on him?
Anyway, I could go on, but I'd recommend this movie, in spite of it's flaws, simply because it tries so much and forces you to regret how much it fails to achieve what it promises. |
