OUR REVIEW
by Dave White
Who's in It: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt
The Basics: It's a good thing I'm not the guy responsible for documenting an incident of international terrorism with my cell-phone video camera, because no crimes would ever get solved if I were. I can barely dial regular phone numbers, much less capture vital footage, then race through the streets of Spain like everyone in this movie does when someone tries to assassinate the U.S. President (Hurt). Or do they?
What's the Deal? When faced with a somewhat idiotic, manic, gimmicky whocareswhodunnit movie like this, you can get angry or you can just go, "You know what? Gimme all your twists and fake-outs and whatever you got. Just make sure there's a decent car chase, too." So that's what happens. People aren't who they seem, "rogue" operatives scamper about, plot twists that don't even live in the same universe where the word "plausible" exists are a matter of course, and then there's an amazing car chase that, while not exactly giving any of the Bourne flicks cause to be concerned, is still a lot of fun.
Digital Recording Machines of the Modern Now: You get the feeling that the big idea here was, "We do it all Rashomon-meets-YouTube!" And 20 minutes from now, it's all going to seem dated. For example, just recently, I was trying to explain this movie from 1960 called Bells Are Ringing to somebody, this dorky old musical about an answering service. Like, people would call an answering service to leave messages for other people because no one had call waiting. Same thing with Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies where people's home phones were on "party lines" and operators had to help you and cut in on calls and stuff. You have to go to Wikipedia to even understand the premise of these movies. I wonder now if someday we're going to look back at this whole wave of films about people with little digital camcorders (Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, some elements of Be Kind Rewind, and now this) and scratch our heads. I mean, just look at The Net and how goofy that one seems now. And it's barely over 10 years old.
My Favorite Gimmick: All the fast-forwarding and rewinding that they show you over and over. It is never not fun to watch people do stuff backwards. I defy anyone to argue this point with me.
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