Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: Paranoia

PARANOIA

☆☆☆☆☆

Director: Robert Luketic.

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amber Heard, Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss. 

PHIL vs BILL
Paranoia is a glossy, mechanical thriller that’s bigger on star power than suspense. Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman play telecommunications moguls whose rivalry is so poisonous that one recruits hi-tech whizz-kid Liam Hemsworth to infiltrate the other’s firm and steal its software. Robert Lutekic is renowned more for making comedies (Killers, Monster-in-Law) than high-stake thrillers, and although he did direct 21, Paranoia’s failure to thrill or surprise suggests he’s a one-trick pony. — Phil Wakefield.

So the producers of Paranoia are getting the team together to shoot this hi-tech cyber thriller and all the focus groups say that the way to get women along to what is generally a penile-centric genre is to get a pretty-yet-macho heartthrob lead bloke who apart from having to do some tricky soldering, also has issues dealing with an attractive and clever, yet secretly vulnerable woman.

“So what about Chris Hemsworth?” asks a helpful flunky. “He’s macho and gorgeous and funny and charismatic and he can really act!”

And one of the four producers, maybe Deepak Nayar or maybe Scott Lambert, I can’t be sure, goes, “Well, we’ve got some dosh for this but not that much since he hammered it in Thor.” He looks around expectedly but nobody bites.

“What about his brother?”

“Liam?” asks another producer. Maybe it’s co-producer William D. Johnson or maybe Alexandra Milchan, I can’t be sure because I am pulling this plausible situation straight out of my jacksy.

“Well, he’s pretty, and he can do an American accent, and he looks good with his shirt off, but he’s only got two emotions – pretty pouty and perplexed pouty.”

“I know what,” says one of the others helpfully. “Let’s make sure he will be acting right up hard against Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss. I mean, they’re all really, really good and that means their actory goodness will rub off him and make him look fantastic on the screen, right?”

And everybody thought that would probably be a really good idea.

And the screenplay, by Jason Hall, who did American Sniper, was probably dark and powerful and looked at how titans of industry could use little people to do their dirty work but that was just a little, well, dark for a date movie.

And Barry L Levy, the other screenwriter, was a tad dark too, so they got really inventive and said, ‘Right, we need a hot girl that women can relate to and get in someone to punch up her part and make sure there’s a happy ending and it’s all wrapped up and all the bad guys are dealt to and the guy and the gal get together and it looks like they’re going to be rich and happy forever.’

“And there you have it guys,” said the cleverest producer, “the best of every possible world in one slick, high-budget computer thriller, romantic movie. We will kill with this.”

And if this is your perfect scenario for a boy meets girl cyber crime thriller, then by jingoes, Paranoia will be cinematic gold for you.

Liam Hemsworth with full body alopecia.

Bad news for the producers is that its budget was US$35m, it took $14m worldwide total, which is a good sign that most of the world looked at the back of the Blu-ray box and went, Naaaah.

It was a near-run thing though. The first half was set up nicely, even though Hemsworth came across as a whiney dick blessed by the gene fairy. And there are a couple of good twists, Oldman eats up his scenes as usual, and there’s a good supporting cast.

But they blow it in the last 40 minutes and it just wraps everything up with easy busts of the bad guys and fantasy wish fulfilment for the beautiful kids, who are, despite a number of good learning opportunities on their roads to redemption, still twats.

And of course the proper end for anyone taking on two titans of the IT industry is a giant career wedgie at best, and at near worst, the unfortunate leaking of all your darkest drunken web postings, emails and chat data.

AND … no extras. None at all. Not that you’d want many but maybe there were some goofs like Gary Oldman swearing inappropriately in front of child actors or the cast chipping in to get a Chewbacca stripogram for Mr Ford for a laugh. But nope. I think everybody ran for the door on this one.

Only of interest to screenwriters and producers to see how not to throw away a good premise, a tidy build up and a pretty reasonable cast.