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When I was invited to a preview screening of “Cypher”, I had very
low expectations from the press release I was sent, but I left the
cinema exhilarated- this is one of the best science fiction movies I
have seen for a very long time. Lucy Liu can really act! And she does all her own stunts. Morgan Sullivan is a solid, stable, reliable and boring man who is mad
as hell at his standardized life and not going to take it anymore. He
decides to give himself, body and soul to a multinational corporation
in exchange for the opportunity to reinvent himself, and live the
exciting double-life of a spy. From the moment he applies
for the job, his life is no longer under his control, and nothing and
nobody is what they seem. Only the cryptic Rita seems to really be sure
what is going on, but does she really want to help him - or is she
using him like everybody else?
Getting to the preview of Cypher was a little spy-like experience in
itself. I arrived at the address for the preview a little early,
looking for level six as instructed. I was disturbed to find that the
directory only listed five floors. I came back closer to the screening
time, and a man leaning around casually in a business suit checked me
out, and checked I was there for the preview. He called me a lift
and with a special key activated the button to access the sixth floor,
where I followed the signs into a tiny, and …empty theaterette.
Well, I was the first to arrive. Eventually I was greeted and told that
the screening was for journalists and “people like you”.
“Are you willing to lie to your wife?”
The movie opens with Morgan’s job interview and lie-detecting brain
scan. Jeremy Northam is brilliant with all the little nuances of the
body language of an awkward shy drone who is just waiting to become the
man he always wanted to be. The glee with which he agrees to lie to his
wife shows how unhappy he is, and the forces that drove
him to this place and this opportunity.
“We can give you a whole new identity.”
Morgan is given a new name, told he can make up any personality he
likes to go with it, any personal history and preferences - he’s
reborn; free at last. He’s sent off to his junior spy assignment at a
trade convention, complete with appropriately ordinary-looking spy
gadgets. Its the near future, but we only get glimpses of the world
outside the Corporations and the Conventions. There are funny-looking
computer disks, cybernetic eyes, sinister brain machines and
designer helicopters, but only where they fit into the story. The
world he’s entered is mostly mundane, until Rita, played by Lucy
Liu, peels back the edge of the ordinary world to show Morgan the
nightmare hiding underneath.
Every new scene is filmed at a new location in Toronto, and the
identity of the players and the nature of the game keeps
changing. Sullivan’s convention hotel was shot at the Regal
Constellation, where I’ve attended several TorontoTrek science fiction
conventions. The airport scene was shot at the Metro Toronto Convention
Centre where the 2003 World Science Fiction Convention will be held.
Don’t worry, WE can give you a whole new identity.
Cypher is a film that will please literary science fiction fans as well
as fans of movies of mystery and intrigue. Its cleverly written and
carefully paced action keeps you fascinated with the hero’s dilemma
and wanting as badly as he does to find out what is really going on,
and what he can do about it, and who he can trust.
There is an entertaining attention to detail, and in-joke homages to
the great spy movies and science fiction stories that Brian King, the
writer has built on.
Its Brian King’s first film, and I definitely hope to see more films
written by him. He’s taken elements of Cyril Kornbluth, Frederick Pohl,
Phillip K. Dick and Alfred Hitchcock, and written something fresh and
original.
Cypher stars Jeremy Northam, Lucy Liu, Nigel Bennett, and Timothy Webber. Its directed by Vincenzo Natali.
Cypher is thought-provoking AND action packed. You have to watch
carefully to see all the clues to what is really going on, and after
the mysteries are solved and all the loose ends tied up at the end of
the film, you want to see it again.
Cypher teases you and draws you in but never lets you down.
© Ian Woolf 2003
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