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Cypher

2002, Movie, R, 96 mins

Cypher: Review

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Screenwriter Brian King's twist premise might have worked better as an episode of an hour-long anthology series; at feature length it runs out of steam before it's over. Bored with his dead-end job and his shrewish wife, Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) goes all out to impress corporate headhunters from Digicorp, who promise him a new lease on life. Outfitted with a hand-picked new identity — "Jack Thursby" — the namby-pamby Sullivan quickly warms to his role as an industrial mole charged with burrowing deep into Digicorp's major rival, Sunways Corporation. But Sullivan/Thursby has no idea that Digicorp is actually monitoring him for other purposes as he flies around the country taping sales convention speeches. Seductive spy Rita (Lucy Liu) offers him an antidote to Digicorp's brainwashing, but it comes at a price: He must work for Sunways while convincing Digicorp that he's still under the control of the implants they surreptitiously slipped into his brain! In a cut-throat world where information is more vital than those who collect it, it dawns on Sullivan that he'll quickly become expendable to Sunways as well. As he juggles multiple identities, Sullivan begs Rita to show him a way to to come in from the cold. Fortuitously enough, she works for a phantom fixer named Conrad Rooks, who brokers deals with all the mega-firms. Eager to retrieve a coveted computer file, the mercenary Rooks has recently decided to pit Digicorp and Sunways against each other. Tired of swimming with the sharks, Sullivan allies himself with Rooks, whose loyalties can change in the blink of an eye: Does a fraidy-cat like Sullivan have more in common with the Machiavellian Rooks than he realizes? Although director Vincent Natali milks every ounce of white-collar paranoia from King’s big business-bashing screenplay, the results are a distant echo of more challenging thrillers like MEMENTO (2001) and SECONDS (1966). That said, the icy-looking art direction and purposefully cool cinematography are unsettling, even as Thursby/Sullivan's predicament becomes more baffling than terrifying. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
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