This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Me, Too.
Plot Overview
Receiving an Oscar nomination up-and-coming
star Matt Hagon (Tom Rhys Harries) repairs to the Vesuvius
nightclub with his friends to celebrate. Known mob moll Mia
Torrez (Joana Ribeiro) hits on him, drugs him, and wakes up in his
bed. Her boyfriend Markos Szabo (David Dencik) pounces on them
and disfigures the actor's face (“You ain't pretty no
more.”) Matt sues only to be confronted by a smear campaign
destroying his reputation. Bummer!
His poor
judgment in women is confirmed when he responds to an article in a
popular magazine—not a scientific journal—about a black
quack Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi
Ackie) experimenting with nanobot driven embryonic stem cells
able to repair tissue like crazy. It's not yet ready for human
trials even if she had the patent for which she claims her research
was stolen. She has a police detective fiancé to cover her
back and now a desperate volunteer for human trials. She
deliberately walks out of the room while Matt is left
connected to her apparatus, and he zaps himself with an
excessive dose, side effects be damned.
He gets his
good looks back, and the new cells are able to shape shift him into
other people/things at their option triggered by his runaway
emotions or a stun gun. People die and he elopes with the doctor.
Ideology
CF is a study in avoiding pitfalls by treading a middle road. (Prov. 30:7) “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:”
(Prov. 30:8-9) “Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” Being content “with food convenient for me” is Matt's lifelong friend Corey Bowery (Joshua James) who wants to be an actor. Matt uses his influence to get him an acting gig, albeit not a leading role. It's as authoress Jacquelyn Park writes:
She wanted to be a singer, which was why she hung around the Circle 3: She hoped to get her first big break there. Then she was going to Hollywood. She knew she could make it in the movies. Everyone said so. You just have to know the right people. (229)
Matt had enough connections in the industry to get him some quotidian voice-only work—audiences loved his iconic talk—even after his incident with the jealous wiseguy (“He cut off my face”) if only he hadn't gambled his reputation by suing the guy. Who knows what he'll dig up from Matt's past in a rough neighborhood? Otherwise, in show business all publicity is good publicity.
Being full of micro-bugs ultimately changed his very nature as he embraced the doctor. (Gen. 1:27) “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” God's imaged is marred when his ♂ – ♀ creation turns into an amorphous blob.
As a researcher the doctor was on a
shoestring budget but always ready for publicity photos. While
the typical mad scientist is frazzled for being distracted, she was
always neat as a pin, not a hair out of place. Her lab was in a
home environment with no other equipment in evidence save
the one project she stole; there was nothing else she was working
on. She had no sponsoring agency and no employees, just a cop as a
live-in partner. When her purloined project exceeded all
expectations, she said to Matt, “We can't tell anyone
about this.” The proverb above was originally addressed to a thief who
would take God's name in vain swearing he didn't take it.
Production Values
“” (2026) was directed by James Watkins. It was written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. It stars Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan. They get the job done.
It's rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use. It's geared to a comic book crowd that likes violence & gore. The effects are pretty realistic, but the story is stupid. Runtime ≈ 1¾ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This one is easy to forget, or you might just want to skip it in the first place. It has a good object lesson, though, about a crooked legal system.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Park, Jacquelyn Holt. A Stone Gone Mad. Copyright © 1991 by Jacquelyn Holt Park. New York: Random House, 1991. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org