Post by Power NeXus on Mar 27, 2011 22:49:15 GMT -5
I just saw this movie today, and I thought I'd put up a quick review.
[glow=red,2,300]BEWARE OF SPOILERS.[/glow]
If you haven't seen this movie, but plan to do so, read with caution.
The general plot of this movie is easily gathered from the previews I'm sure you've all seen. Stupid half-bum kind of a guy takes a little wonder pill that increases his brain power a hundred fold, and he slides comfortably into life in the fast lane. With his new intelligence, the protaganist (Eddie), begins to attempt to build his riches by hitting the Wall Street scene as a stock-trading prodigy. That being said, let me break down some of the individual parts of the film.
Acting
Not a whole lot to be said here. I was not blown away by any performances, but then again I rarely am. I never took any drama or acting classes or anything like that. I don't really notice good acting. I only notice acting when it's bad. Thankfully, I did not notice anything bad about the acting in this movie.
Visuals
It was not the kind of film that normally has any major visuals to praise or criticize, but there was a sort of camera action done several times early in the film that left me feeling almost dizzy. It was some kind of cross between fast forward movement, and constantly zooming in. It's difficult to describe. I just wanted to point out that despite my love for fast and 'dizzying' camera actions in most films (I didn't mind Cloverfield at all), this strange effect just felt completely weird.
Plot
It almost feels like this movie could be divided into two separate halves, both very different from each other. The first half of the movie felt like an extravagent anti-drug campaign. The story involved Eddie taking a mysterious, experimental pill from a dealer (who ends up murdered), and loving it's effects. He aquires a large stash of the pills and starts taking them regularly, instantly putting his life on easy street. Then he starts feeling the side effects. He begins to lose entire chunks of memory, finding himself in bizarre places and situations and having no idea how he got there. He seems to have murdered a hooker during one of these memory lapses. He begins to get headaches and nausea. He finds his dealer's contact list and calls all the other people who took this drug. Three of them are dead and the rest are extremely sick. Then Eddie runs into his ex-wife, who also took the drug some time ago. She is in terrible condition. She claims that when she finally got herself off the drug, he mind slowed down to a crawl. The entire feel of the movie at that point is a standard anti-drug commercial. "Yeah, drugs are awesome at first, but eventually they destroy you."
Then, somehow, that entire issue is basically solved in a single sentence. "I found that as long as I didn't up my dose, I remembered to eat and sleep regularly, and never touched any alcohol, my headaches went away." Eddie cures himself of the adverse effects of the drug (something that none of the other brilliant people had ever managed to do before), and the entire "drugs kill you" issue is never even touched upon again in the film.
The second half of the film was all about Eddie's struggle to gain power and money. Along the way, he is hindered by a falling-through of a corporate merger he had planned (failed because the CEO of one company was another fellow pill-user who suddenly fell ill to their side effects), and a man to whom he owes money (named Gennady), and who starts taking the pill himself and then tries to destroy Eddie and take his entire stash. Eddie's confrontations with Gennady lead to a fight scene that was very shockingly graphic for a PG-13 movie. He and his bodyguards bust into Eddie's flat so they can take his stash of pills by force (and due to an earlier plot twist, Eddie has lost his entire stash and the effects of his latest hit have worn off). Gennady prepares to torture/kill Eddie, but Eddie manages to surprise him with a hidden knife. Eddie stabs him in the stomach with a knife, and the blood pools around him. Eddie, desparate for just a little hit of the drug so he can fight his way past the bodyguards too, drinks Gennady's blood up off the floor. (I'm not shocked by most things I see in movies anymore, but I was flat-out disgusted when I saw that). The drug in Gennady's blood provides enough for Eddie to work his way out of that situation, and then... nothing. The rest of the movie is surprisingly anti-clamactic. Eddie just continues to be smart. Then there's a flash-forward to one year in the future. Eddie is running for Senate. He ends up in a meeting with his old boss from when he was trading stocks. It turns out this guys owned the drug labs all along. The guy tells Eddie, "Hey, look at you. You've gotten pretty powerful. Start working for me again and we won't cut off your drug supply." Then Eddie comes back and says, "Screw you dude. I don't even use the drug anymore, but somehow I made it's effects permanent so I'm brilliant as heck anyway. You can go die for all I care." Then the movie ends.
The Good
Good acting, fairly original story line. Most of the time, it was really just fun to watch this guy going around being brilliant all the time.
The Bad
Two well-known phrases came to mind as I was leaving the theatre. 1) Knowledge is power. 2) Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While Eddie had at first been revolted by the idea that he may have commited a murder in one of his memory-losses, he ends up brutally murdering Gennady and his henchmen near the end without and hesitation or bad feelings afterwards. The movie is supposed to be about his rise to power, but it almost feels like it's about him slowly becoming more and more evil and depraved, and learning to cover it up. Near the end of the movie, he doesn't even feel like a protagonist anymore. He just looks like the most brilliant evil scum in the world (who also happens to be running for Senate, and then possibly President later on). On top of that, the scene where he murders a man and then drinks his blood up off the floor was just ridiculously over-the-top graphic in my opinion. I didn't pay nine bucks at the ticket booth to see that. Finally, the directing just seemed to be ill-planned. "Adverse side effects of the drug seemed to be a major problem for a while, but I found out that a generally healthy lifestyle takes all the health risks away." "I'm totally off the pill now but I took it so much that I'm still a genius anyway."
4/10