Incredibly silly cash-machine.

Rating: 3/10 (16 February 2007)

Tony Scott reaches new peaks of lameness with this thriller. Tony Scott also directed the somewhat more successful Enemy Of The State, which by the way has a similar theme, and the abysmal Domino.
True, it has a good pace when it comes to action and suspense, but all this is really negligible when you look at such small things as the premises for the story.
When science is used to create a plot twist, the producers should really use a scientific consultant, instead of going "Hey, that would be cool! And what if we make the gizmo do THIS kind of fancy trick ..." The results are invariable laughable and lame, not to say insulting to the viewer's intelligence.
Well, plot holes aside, what about the handiwork? The editing and camera-work is above average, the music is a bit annoying (what IS it with that backwards piano sample that fancy thrillers use these days?), but the visual effects are very good.
As for the casting ... We don't get to know Denzel Washingtons character in any depth. Actually, all the characters are quite flat, except perhaps for Paula Patton's character Claire. Denzel also has strange uncharacteristic outbursts of laughter at very misplaced moments, that gave me that uneasy feeling that he was downright insane. That wasn't the intention, was it ... ? It's just as if Tony Scott said: "Hey, I was not entirely satisfied by the performance here; let's shoot that laughing sequence again, laugh *harder*, and cut-and-paste it into the original scene." It is actually disturbing to look at. Val Kilmer is horrible as always (do something about that mole, for crying out loud, and smarten up!) and some of the one-liners are really off the scale in lameness. (For example something like "It's a really bad week to quit smoking hash" from a science-guy. Hardy-har.) Jim "Holy Man" Caviezel is actually quite good in this flick. He was scary sometimes.
Bottom line: Annoying movie, but enjoyable action when you forget about all the negative things for a minute.