This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Signs of the Times
Plot Overview
In the not-too-distant future, countries
have been taken over by corporations. When they ran out of large ad
space, Hope Industries launched an experimental program called
Project 660 whereby they implant chips in test subjects
enabling them to project ads inside their heads. They have a fail-safe
mechanism by which they jolt a body into submission who strays from
their parameters; in extreme cases it's a lethal jolt.
Subject 373 Luke Gibson (Cuba Gooding
Jr.), former Captain in the Army Special Forces, has strayed from
the game but his intended kill shot has been blocked by hacker Traxler
“Keyboard” Vukovich (Chad Krowchuk) who with his
father Hal (Michael Ironside) and a sibling pair Punk Blue (Juan
Riedinger) & Punk Red (Tatiana Maslany) have formed a resistance
cell. They send him floating instructions & hovering arrows to
direct him how to evade the hit squad that comes after him.
Ideology
Here has arisen conflict
à la, (Prov. 30:33) “Surely
the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the
nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth
strife.” The idea in the
proverb is that a state of peace and conciliation can change
to one of war just as a liquid (milk) can change to solid (butter)
through constant agitation (churning.) Or hit a critical area (nose)
and it bleeds. The former is illustrated by a mental bombardment of
cyber ads for a product, which won't stop until the targeted individual
acquires actual possession of it … even if he must steal. The
latter by bloody noses of the actors for the spiels once Luke locates
them and expresses his displeasure.
What really provokes Hal is his son
“just lying there” a paraplegic after he'd been shot in
the head. It gets to him after a while. What gets Luke's goat, after
he's recovered most of his memory, was the assassination of his pregnant
wife Veronica (Monica Mustelier.) That's enough to get this crew to
come after the corp exec Virgil Kirkhill (Val Kilmer) big time.
Production Values
“” (2009) was directed by Ernie Barbarash. It was written by Michael Hurst. It stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michael Ironside. The acting was adequate except for the doctor's part that was wooden.
MPA rated it R
for violence. It was filmed on location in Langley, British Columbia,
Canada. In Sci-Fi flicks setting is important to evoke some future
time. Here commercial ads are shown displayed on (corporate owned)
landmarks and the like, which would be verboten in our day and
age. To compensate for the deluge of information, people arrange their
personal spaces with elegance & simplicity. Kitchen pots &
pans are shiny & smooth. Houseplants are waving grasses. Dishware
is in primary colors. Paintings are abstract forms with sweeping lines.
Only the human guinea pigs who receive adverts internally have reverted
to the clutter endemic to our own modern life.
We would call leading man Luke &
judas goat Drake (Eric Breker) African Americans, which
phrase superseded black in our vernacular, and before
that they'd have gone by any of various ‘n-words’ derived
from the Latin niger
for black. Further back still was Noah's grandson Cush, meaning black in Hebrew,
having settled in Africa, of the disfavored line of Noah's son Ham.
African-American wouldn't carry the same weight in this
picture, because America is now a maligned corporation and Africa
ain't what it used to be either. Shown in broadside is an onyx
standing stationary on the savannah with its coat emblazoned with a
dyed-in-the-wool full-page ad. Yes, we're back to skin color in this future.
History has repeated its sorry self. Dr. Ide writes, “Noah feared that any intercourse within each species in the ark would lead to an explosion of the number of that species and thus forbade all beings ([human] and animal) from coitus. Only three of the passengers refused: Noah's son Ham who feared that if he didn't have coitus with his wife his brothers Shem and Japheth would discover that their sister-in-law was already pregnant by a giant, the dog and a rooster. To expose their crime of coitus during this ‘holy voyage of abstinence’ the yahweh [i.e. God] of Noah turned Ham's skin black, lengthened his penis and made him so lustful that he would engage in sex at any instance” (36). I heard of the same punishment once on a German shortwave broadcast discussing Jewish traditions, but it added also that because of his insolent words, Ham's lips were thickened, and because of his perversion his hair was turned kinky.
Here Luke's wife recorded an a.m. birthday greeting apologizing for having to go into work early but said she would give him his “present” later. When he picked her up from work, she indicated she was available for a roll in the hay if he wanted to skip their planned social engagement. And in a pastiche of their life together, she is shown on the couch with a come-hither invitation. She knows him as “so lustful that he would engage in sex at any instance.” Corporate instead of calling him insolent called him “belligerent,” about the same thing. And kinky creature Robert Drake was so compromised that Luke told him to get another gig.
The production values were quite strong for a direct-to-video movie. The script while derivative does attempt a little mystery and a few original touches. Runtime's about 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is not an extravagant Sci-Fi blockbuster, but sometimes less is more. It does evoke a 50's style milieu sans apology for low budget, as excessive public commercialism had forced the characters to tone down their personal spaces. Racism, if one could even call it that, was worn rather than shouted as were sexist punk hairdos color coded. There was lots of tension and plenty of action. Christians often complain about too much commercialism in the media, and here we're given something to complain about. If Sci-Fi movies are supposed to be cautionary tales, this one succeeds in spades. It delivers on multiple fronts.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence
of Sex, Homophobia and
Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its
Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org