Directed by: Lisa Joy
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandie Newton
This movie looks good. And that is just about all that’s good about it.
The camera, production design, photography, sci-fi effects are all almost driven to perfection.
But, again, that is all. Everything else is just not a very successful attempt.
This psychic (played by Hugh Jackman) from the near (or not so near future) is going to put you in a fish tank, he is going to put some kind of device on your head and he is going to “scan” your brain and will see everything from your past. Nothing new, nothing original. This has been done so many times by so many movies in the past.
During his, future-psychic, sessions he meets a patient, a young lady (played by Rebecca Ferguson) and he falls in love with her. This is, again, so average and so déjà vu.
After a short love period, she disappears, and he goes looking for her. He figures out that she is in trouble-involved with bad guys and drugs, and he is so disappointed. But eventually he discovers that she is not that bad. She was actually saving the kid who was ordered to be killed by the son of a dying real estate magnate in fight for his inheritance. The big boss’s son finds out that the kid is his also his dad’s son, which he had outside of marriage.
We’ve seen these kind of stories in almost every season of “Dallas” or “Dynasty”. But they are okay in those shows, they are not okay here, in a movie pretending to be something much more substantial.
And in the end, the most illogical element: why is this everyday story about an unfaithful powerful man happening in an apocalyptic future setting where Miami is almost completely under water covered by the uncontrollable tides of the ocean. Like, why is it not located in, let’s say, New York, or L.A. in modern day?
What is the point of the whole sci-fi element? This is because now sci-fi is trending so it’s going to sell the movie better? Maybe, except there really isn’t any reason for anything apocalyptic to be in this movie.
It also looks that the screenwriter and director, Lisa Joy, wants to play a little daily politics: the planet is dying so that’s how the future will look like (like we don’t know that), or in the future when the earth goes under water, everyone will sink and suffer, only the big and rich ones will find a place on dry soil-like, today is not the same- everyone is suffering but the big and rich ones too.
Hugh Jackman is a very good actor. No doubt about that. But, it looks like that is enough for him too. The same facial expressions, the same voice intonation, the same love scenes, the same fight scenes with years, in every movie. He has presented everything he has, already. This now this is just an industrial fabrication of every next role he plays. No passion, no real involvement-just doing the job. But, acting is not like any other job-it is a special one.
Go see the movie.
At least its’s going to be some enjoyment for your eyes.
