This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Starting On the Wrong Foot
Plot Overview
A narrator
tells us how he got in the trouble he's obviously in: “The American
Dream our parents knew has been hijacked by men who were willing to
lie, cheat and steal … to protect their wealth. Used to be
if you got good grades, you got into the right school. Got the right
job and after fifteen years of hard work, you got your name on the
door. But that world is gone.” After six years in a top tech
company, Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) is a “lowly cubicle drone
stuck with entry level salary.” His dad Frank Cassidy (Richard
Dreyfuss) spent thirty-two years as a security guard. But they live
in the same world, just made different choices. That is the heavy
irony of this film.
Both Adam and Frank are lovers.
Frank is a baseball enthusiast and in his heyday frequented
discotheques. He was able to wait out Adam's mom (“You
know how long it took me to get a date with your mother?”)
Baseball also requires patience waiting for something to
happen. Adam's game is basketball. He's got the moves. At the
Club Rise he picks up pretty Emma Jennings (Amber Heard) and spends
the night with her. In his father's day a girl of easy virtue loses
respect. Adam and Emma, it turns out, work for rival companies. When
his company found out he was sleeping with the enemy, they twisted
his arm to spy on her. While she's in the shower he gets into her
computer for trade secrets and into her purse for the password. When
she finds out, she feels “used.” Not much respect there.
Emma
and her four brothers all went to Yale an Ivy League school. Under
pressure to succeed, she is always the best prepared. But in meetings
she arrives late. In Frank's day a woman usually arrives late for
any engagement after spending endless time prepping. I can't see how
much has changed there.
Emma is chief marketing exec at Adam's rival company Eikon. His company Wyatt's psychologist Dr. Judith Bolton (Embeth Davidtz) grooms him to be hired by Eikon (“Trust is the holy grail of espionage.”) It's run by Wyatt's nemesis Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford.) This modern grooming using advanced techniques is not so different from that of bygone eras. Set in the year 1947, Andrew Graham's interviews at The Club went much the same way:
Sir George had
interviewed many young men in his time. He observed that this one
was well spoken, well dressed, and apparently well connected. He had
an honest face, clean hands, a tidy if rather undistinguished combatant
war record, and, at any rate at first sight, an agreeable personality.
His testimonials were satisfactory. (21)
The FBI pressures Adam to roll over on the big guys by showing him pictures of the bodies of former Wyatt employees who'd been hired by Eikon. Wyatt strongman Miles Meechum (Julian McMahon) sees to it that Adam remains in the game by threatening his friends (or worse.) Adam's father gives him good advice from his own experience in the world.
Ideology
Let's look at how succeeding in a modern world stacks up against a biblical formula for success. Ordinary people provide role models as in the saying, (Prov. 30:24) “There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:”
(Prov. 30:25)
“The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat
in the summer.” It's recommended to start work early, in the
summer of life. Adam notices antique radios at Jock's place. “I
made them,” he says. “That's how I spent my teens, ham
radio.” I also started ham radio in high school, and others
have done it younger. It's a volunteer opportunity to serve one's
community. It's not unheard of to pirate a case from an existing
commercial radio and change out its guts. Technophile Roy Hall
of Music Hall wanted better AM (and FM) reception in a table radio,
and it just wasn't available, so he built and marketed his own, the
RDR-1, Radio Done Right. He started with the platform for a Sangean
WR2 and built his new radio on top of it. Jock has a device that detects
cell phone signals and alerts him with a waterfall display while
beeping out 4i in high speed Morse code.
Emma competing with four brothers for entry into Yale would necessarily have shown a lot of activity in her younger years.
Adam was raised in a low income home
in Brooklyn. His mother died when he was seven. He grew up one of
five in a little row house with one bathroom. If we have trouble
imagining how chores played out there, consider Graham's Club:
The kitchen had been
thoroughly modernized in the 1930's when the need to economize
manpower had first been felt. At this time various costly devices had
been installed which enabled the same number of people to do rather less
work for the same wages. (53–4)
We take it Adam did his share.(Prov. 30:26) “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” Location is ever so important. Adam was envious of the big boys over across the bridge in Manhattan. He didn't get his name on the door. When events conspired to settle him back in Brooklyn, though, he had an epiphany: “I like being across the bridge. Over here, it feels like home.” He moved with him one of the radios he admired at Jock's place. If his goal is to have his name on the door, then he's wanting to be a big frog in a smaller pond.
(Prov. 30:27) “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” It's most important to have an informal support network to watch one's back. Adam had “my own R&D focus group” consisting of Kevin (Lucas Till), Allison (Angela Sarafyan), Morgan (William Peltz), and Chelsea (Haley Finnegan) who more or less followed him around. He also had a girlfriend whom he could keep in play with the right moves.
(Prov. 30:28)
“The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings'
palaces.” A palace is a place that gets cleaned and swept regularly,
so that spider has to take initiative and weave new webs whenever
that happens. She can be contrasted with a spider in a dirty prison
in a Seymour novel who is left alone:
A shared cell
in the south-west block of the Poggioreale. A spider, huge, whose
territory was the angles between the brickwork, the bars and
the grimy glass of the window. It had a web that extended nearly a
metre across and a half a metre high and the prisoners bet each evening,
in cigarettes, how many new flies would be trapped in the daylight
hours and eaten at night. The spider was esteemed and admired, its
body the size of a matchbook. (169)
The palace spider enjoys no such protection. Upon being fired Adam needed to take the initiative from the ground up (“There are no shortcuts.”) Chels wondered, “We'll find new jobs, right?” Allison went and tended bar. Kevin was at his wit's end.
Production Values
“” (2013) was directed by Robert Luketic. Its screenplay was written by Jason Dean Hall and Barry Levy, based on the Joseph Finder novel Paranoia. It stars Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, and Harrison Ford. Hemsworth was too much a lightweight next to the other two to keep it on track, so it succeeded as a different kind of dark movie, but that's Hollywood. The romance lacked authenticity, and the harried sap lacked a sense of panic, but the dark world of big business came through so strongly that its drama succeeds here in its own right.
MPA rated it PG–13 for some sexuality, violence and language. The background music was suitably dramatic. Inclusion of a working amateur radio station was a nice touch as that was once about the only outlet for a young man's creative technical energies. It's just that a licensed station would not have been so accessible to any schmuck in the house, and the antenna farm that goes with it would have been noticeable on the grounds. They could have used some technical consultation in this area and others.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
I thought there were some nice touches of family values, the older guy being cared for and included. Over ambition in sexual and business exploits resulted in comeuppance, good. Hitting the bars upon being fired was understandable but still a bad move. If any of the characters has religious inklings, the camera doesn't show it save for the name of the Catholic hospital and its caring staff.
Its thriller aspect is rather brief but the tension real enough. There might be better dramatic thrillers, but this one will do to fill in the time.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Graham, Andrew. The Club. Copyright © 1957 by Andrew Graham. New York: Reynal & Company, 1957. Print.
Seymour, Gerald. The Collaborator. Copyright © 2009 Gerald Seymour. New York: The Overlook Press, 2011. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org