PARANOIA (Robert Luketic). 106 minutes. Opens Friday (August 16). See listing. Rating: N
There is one surprise in Robert Luketic’s witless, thrill-free Paranoia, and it has nothing to do with the movie’s plot. It’s Harrison Ford, who inexplicably decided to give an actual performance after more than a decade of sleepwalking through roles. The problem is, he only has about 20 minutes of screen time, and that’s not enough to justify enduring the rest of this awful, awful movie.
Paranoia is an espionage thriller set in the world of high tech, but in no way is it actually a high-tech espionage thriller. It’s barely a movie – just a collection of scenes you’ll recognize from other, better films of decades past, all arranged in an order that approximates a thriller narrative.
It may have been recut, with key details and relationships altered or thrown away in pursuit of a slicker, more focused story, but I doubt it Luketic’s never shown much regard for structure or coherence, and he clearly didn’t give a crap about this movie as he was filming it.
Paranoia is really just another teen-targeted aspirational drama, following a poor Brooklyn kid (The Hunger Games co-star Liam Hemsworth) recruited by a mobile phone magnate (Gary Oldman) to get close to another techno legend (Ford) and steal his game-changing new device.
It’s dumb as a post and totally predictable, alternating long scenes of nonsensical technobabble (which I imagine screenwriters Jason Dean Hall and Barry Levy invented by writing down everything they’d heard the last time they bought cellphones and then sexing it up) with Gatsby-level preening. Hemsworth’s vapid hero gets to wear nice clothes, live in a splendid apartment and bed a gorgeous marketing rep (Amber Heard, who used to say she’d never play disposable roles like this).
I don’t blame Luketic for Hemsworth’s clunking performance – the actor has the looks of his brother, Avengers co-star Chris, but none of the actual talent. Still, Luketic should have been able to get more out of his strong supporting cast, which also includes Richard Dreyfuss, Embeth Davidtz and Lost’s Josh Holloway. The one thing you won’t see coming is Ford’s textured, considered and briefly moving performance.
But like I said, it ain’t worth the pain of the rest of it.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision
