Lisa Joy directs Hugh Jackman, Thandiwe Newton and Rebecca Ferguson in this sci-fi noir thriller where in a waterlogged dystopian Miami a man relives memories through a machine.

Not really a film in it own right but a box ticking exercise in how many better classics are referenced or recycled. Strange Days without the confident aggression. Blade Runner without the lived in world. Inception without the quality control. Memento without any emotional heft. Chinatown without the shocks. Dark City without the cult potential. The list goes on and on. A shiny, soggy mash where action intrudes only occasionally and often unconvincingly. The kind of movie that blatantly tells you how it is going to end in the middle, so you set your watch hoping it won’t do that with such an obvious thud. Clearly the victim of some degree of studio meddling, we all want original, ambitious sci-fi content with grandiose budgets. This film wouldn’t know originality or ambition is it was plugged into a dream machine for the rest of its life. Okay… so there is one chillingly inventive scene involving a billionaire’s widow lost in time that feels like something Philip K Dick or Alan Moore might conjure up. Otherwise this is just not it! The polar opposite of what we are craving. Yet it plods along inoffensively with a great cast who are gamely unsure if they are making the new The Matrix or another Transcendence. Oh well!

5

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