Anon – Movie Review

 

Anon is a weird yet semi plausible movie of a dystopian world where your privacy pretty much doesn’t exist. Every mind or POV of a person (point of view) is accessible by law enforcement through connection to a network of recorded memories when a crime is committed the officers can access the POV of both the victim and the accused. People can also replay memories as video segments to themselves in their own head.
Interesting concept and I am sure I have come across something similar in the Black Mirror series.
People in this world have the ability to bring up HUDS (Heads Up Displays) that show information on everything and everyone, it enables people to see the nutritional value in food or the make and models of the hydrogen-powered cars that are scarcely inhabiting the city, this is where the film makes its first step forward in plot, but I will get to that in a bit.

The film itself was interesting and although slow to kick off, the build-up gave enough character information, at a steady pace to not feel like you have just sat down to an episode of Jeremy Kyle and been force feed back stories and details of randoms in 5 minutes.
I was surprised though at the level of acting, not in a good way, the leads do a pretty good job at holding it together and not becoming to cringe, but the extra’s who play most of the victims in the movie seemed like they were taken straight out of a first-year actors certificate at Overactors School of Acting.
Clive Owen who plays the alcoholic, traumatized by past events and incredibly old-school detective cliche Sal Frieland, does a really good job throughout, complimenting Amanda Seyfried’s performance as “Anon”, both really making this hour and forty minutes more bearable, because as good as this film is to watch, I really can’t get over how shit the performance of the victims was, maybe it was intentional, but from the feel and tone of the movie I highly doubt it.

So our friend Sal comes across a random woman one day as he is walking the street, this young lady comes up in his HUD as
“unknown – error” instead of her name age and occupation, that comes up with every other person, later that day there is a murder, the victim is killed by someone who has no Metadata signature (metadata being data about data that allows information like GPS locations and so on) nor does the victim see the murderer, instead the victim see themselves through the killers eyes, indicating that the killer hacked into the victim and took over the victims POV before killing them.
Sal remembers the young lady from earlier on, but just after sharing the file of the memory (oh yea so people can send video clip files of memories to each other by saying “sent it to you” or the likes of) to his captain, the memory is wiped from his mind and then from everyone else, as he investigates further Sal learns that everyone that seen this woman has had that moment of their memory replaced or patched to remove her.
Here begins the cat and mouse style detective search, that takes us on a journey of mind hacking and erasing, real-time POV manipulation and other fun things like seeing stuff that isn’t actually there.

Again I enjoyed the premise of the film and found myself quite content with the ending, there is a little twist, which in all honesty, I didn’t expect and was genuinely surprised, but in retrospect, (like after watching Fight Club for the second time around) the signs were there.

A good movie, with no major complaints, apart from the acting of some (all) victims. I do warn you though, there is at least 4 graphic sex scenes throughout, I’m not one for throwing a sex scene into a movie to show skin or keep eyes on the screen, personally I like films that can achieve a sex scene without you seeing or hearing more than a kiss and or a roll on the bed, but that’s me… anywho, the sex scenes really do serve as a vital part of the film, emphasising the need for Anon’s ability and at the start of the film, used to drive it forward.

Now before I finish up, I’d like to draw your attention to the director, Andrew M. Niccol, who happens to be a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director, who wrote and directed Gattaca, Simone, Lord of War, In Time, The Host, and Good Kill and wrote and co-produced The Truman Show,

All in all, an interesting film with an interesting end, a bit of dark humour and cheap laughs, a fair amount of sex and a small amount of actual violence.
A good journey and one I would and am going to watch again.

Director: Andrew M. Niccol

Cast:
Clive Owen as Sal Frieland
Amanda Seyfried as The Gir/Anon
Colm Feore as Detective Charles Gattis
Sonya Walger as Kristen
Mark O’Brien as Cyrus Frear
Joe Pingue as Lester Goodman
Iddo Goldberg as Joseph Kenik
Sebastian Pigott as Detective Vardy
Rachel Roberts as Cassandra
Toyin Ishola as Chloe Benitez

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