This movie is like a typical short story from those 1970's SF paperback anthologies. You know that a third of the stories will be meh-to-okay, half will be garbage and the remaining less-than-twenty-percent might be a good read.
Anon falls into the "Okay" group. The writer has a usable idea, the characters are easily understood, the future is all grey, unpainted, concrete with minimalist furnishings and empty streets - and the magical technology is invisible and very few seem to actually understand it.
Unfortunately, the execution of the movie is utterly unimaginative. Sets, costumes and vehicles rely on that rusty old dodge of using Retro to indicate Futuristic, because contemporary styling dates an SF movie so hilariously quickly. But that aside, the technical and logical holes in the story spoil it profoundly. I also found the POV scenes, where a sprite of an inanimate, gloved hand holding a revolver is used like a cursor in any of a million shoot-em-up computer games, incredibly stupid. My first reaction was to think that the POV was being rendered by futuristic AI to recreate the scene for the investigators. Reinforcing this feeling is the unrealistically slow and smooth panning of the scene - like a surveillance camera instead of the movement of a human eye.
I think that Clive Owen did the best he could with what he was given. The same goes for Amanda Seyfried, while looking as desirable as ever - with dark hair and bangs, she's a lovely dish. I don't think anyone else could have added to her performance. The rest of the cast were nonentities - especially the commissioner and the bad guy. I don't think I would recognise them in another movie.
Anon falls into the "Okay" group. The writer has a usable idea, the characters are easily understood, the future is all grey, unpainted, concrete with minimalist furnishings and empty streets - and the magical technology is invisible and very few seem to actually understand it.
Unfortunately, the execution of the movie is utterly unimaginative. Sets, costumes and vehicles rely on that rusty old dodge of using Retro to indicate Futuristic, because contemporary styling dates an SF movie so hilariously quickly. But that aside, the technical and logical holes in the story spoil it profoundly. I also found the POV scenes, where a sprite of an inanimate, gloved hand holding a revolver is used like a cursor in any of a million shoot-em-up computer games, incredibly stupid. My first reaction was to think that the POV was being rendered by futuristic AI to recreate the scene for the investigators. Reinforcing this feeling is the unrealistically slow and smooth panning of the scene - like a surveillance camera instead of the movement of a human eye.
I think that Clive Owen did the best he could with what he was given. The same goes for Amanda Seyfried, while looking as desirable as ever - with dark hair and bangs, she's a lovely dish. I don't think anyone else could have added to her performance. The rest of the cast were nonentities - especially the commissioner and the bad guy. I don't think I would recognise them in another movie.
