Paranoia (2013)

Waste of time

Thanks for the memories!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I came across the book in a dollar store and figured I'd have something to read on my upcoming plane trip. I actually forgot about it until a week ago and started reading. I realized A List actors were on the cover and realized it was a movie. I decided to finish the book and watch the film after. I'd expect more from an ABC movie of the week. The speed at which the story unfolds is ridiculous and that is being generous. THE ACTING...only slightly better, On the plus side,,,if you're a fan of plot holes, you are in luck. If you enjoy an occasional, albeit brief views of the New York City skyline...you're in luck. In short, do yourself a favor and don't bother,

Iv'e streamed this film a few times, and iv'e had mixed feelings about it, i recently rented it on Amazon Prime and iv'e realized that this type of movie can only be entertaining if you pay close attention to the plot from start to finish. The tech-talk can be confusing to people who are not tech-geeks, the computer-talk alone can get you to lose interest, but if you stick with it and thoroughly follow what is going on - the movie becomes interesting.

****SPOILERS****A bit boring as well as overly-complicated movie about corporate espionage that has young 27 year old inventor Adam "Hop-a-Long-Cassidy, Liam Hemsworth,get fired together with his crew from his job at Wyatt Corp. That's for him shooting his mouth off about just what a genius he is that enraged, in feeling he's the top banana,his boss Nicholas Wyyatt, Gary Oldman, who gave him his walking papers.The young fool Adam in trying to get back at his former boss uses the company credit card for him and his friends to party the night away without permission leaving him and friends open to credit fraud and as much as a 5 year jail sentence! Baqck home Adams has pressing problems with his widowed dad Frank, Richard Dreyfuss, who's already run up over $40,000.00 in medical bills, that his insurance doesn't cover, and is now hospitalized again with a near fatal heart-attack due to his refusal to stop smoking cheap as well as expensive cigars!It's during all this trouble that Adam is approached by one of Wyatt's goons to infiltrate his rival and once partner in business Jock Goddard, Harrison Ford, and find and give him the blueprint to his latest cellphone invention that's to revolutionized the world of electronics as well as make billions out of it. Getting in good with Jock or Jacko as he likes to be called Adam soon learns his secret invention but what he doesn't know about Jacko is that anyone who works for him under the table, like Adam, ends up mysteriously killed in a car accident or murdered in a mugging or home invasion.****SPOILERS****It takes a while for Adam to get the picture that he's being both blackmailed by Wyatt as Goddard for either getting killed or a long stretch, as a corporate spy, behind bars. His only chance to get out of this mess is work with the FBI in getting the goods on both corporate crooks by getting their conversations on his hidden cellphone that he does with the help of his unsuspecting girlfriend Emma Jennings, Amber Heard,who works in Goddard's office. Ridicules ending with a cool as a cucumber Adam putting the hurt on both Wyatt who by then already got royally screwed, by his cheating partner Goddard, as well as Goddard by having their plans exposed to the FBI with his hidden cellphone. As for Adam he got off light with a suspended sentence, like most snitches in these kind of movies, for cooperating with the FBI by getting a new start in life as well as a clean record in starting up his own electronic company with Emma not only married to him but being the company's vice president!!

This movie proves that Liam Hemsworth isn't his brother, and doesn't have the charisma to be a leading man. Add to that a clichéd script driven by coincidence and stupidity, lazy performances and zero tension in what is ostensibly a "thriller" and you have yourself a turkey. To start, the voice-over narration is mostly pointless, as it's just telling you stuff that you're seeing, or will see in short time. There is minimal character development, and the lead character is so un-charismatic that it's painful to watch. He's not even that likable in my opinion. Sure, he has the puppy dog face, but he makes the stupidest decisions and he's an asshole to everyone he knows. The plot is something about corporate espionage, but we're never given a reason to care. There's lots of buzzwords and jargon thrown around to make it sound "hip" and "cool" or "techie" but none if it really adds up to anything. It just sounds like they didn't really think the story through that much. To top things off, what little conflict there is has no dramatic weight for the most part, and the ending wraps up everything too cleanly and quickly to be believable. Yay, good triumphs over evil, but throw reality out the window while you're at it. Even the romantic subplot isn't interesting enough to distract you from all of the ineptness in the movie, and to be honest they didn't have too much on screen chemistry anyway. The only legitimate reasons to see this movie are Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, and even they ham it up in the scenes they're in, only appearing together twice. They can chew the scenery with the best of them, but they're given precious little to work with here. Still, there is some creative directorial flourishes (if you can call them that) which kind of lend a veneer of cool to the proceedings, but everything else is so banal it really begs the question why the director even bothered with a script this bad. Save your money and/or time with this one.