it may as well have been a dream (SPOILER)

Rating: 5/10 (13 February 2002)

Lazy. As the film progresses it becomes more and more interesting, probing further into the mind of the lead, and increasingly disorientating viewer.
However, it conveniently wraps up everything into a neat little package unlikely to offend or affect anyone. A terrible terrible terrible finale.
During the first and second acts, the film poses questions about vanity, sanity, morality and reality, and answers them with the modern equivalent of the oldest cliche ending in the book - "it was all a dream" for the 21st century. The dream is replaced with a ridiculous science fiction get-out which has no relevance to the preceding film. And the resulting subject matter of virtual reality and cryogenics has been done better, with more point, more depth and more humour on TV drama and sit-coms for the last 15 years. Quite what this 2001 movie thought it could bring to the subject I fail to see. Some creative person behind this movie spent a long time writing themselves into a labyrinth of a story, and as deadline day loomed clearly saw they had no way of getting out.