Skip to main content

I.T. -- a review


I.T. tries to be a Hitchcock-like thriller that stars former James Bond Peirce Brosnan as Mike Regan, an airline tycoon who befriends Patrick (Jason Barry), his I.T. advisor, after Patrick’s wizardry with computers saves Mike’s life during an important business presentation. Mike then invites Patrick to his upscale smart mansion to fix the wifi--but doing this winds up being a big mistake, since Patrick turns out to be a sick puppy who begins stalking Mike’s daughter Kaitlyn (Stefanie Scott) through their smart house, which helpfully comes equipped with cameras that allow Patrick to spy on them in the supposed privacy of their home any time he wants.


I mainly saw I.T. because of the sturdy cast--which, aside from Brosnan (who I thought did a fine job as Bond), also includes Anna Friel (Marcella, Timeline) as his wife and Stefanie Scott (Insidious: Chapter 3) as his daughter. And even Michael Nyqvist (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) shows up. But I.T. winds up being pretty bland and predictable. You know full well from the moment Mike invites Patrick over to his place that it’s going to be a big mistake, and that things will only get worse from there. A more decent take on this subject would try to present a twist in the proceedings, changing the storyline from what we expect to happen and diverting us into new, more suspenseful territory.



But I.T. is just too lame to try and be different. Instead it takes us down the all-too familiar road that’s already been visited in a dozen lesser thrillers, while not giving too much thought to its premise, or the ugly message it imparts. This happens when Mike and Henrik (Nyqvist), a security expert he hires to help him, have to get Patrick out of his house in order for Mike to steal some valuable evidence from him. They do this by using another victim whom Patrick has stalked, a barista (Neringa Juodkunaite) whose cell phone Henrik steals from her by way of taking it right from her pocket.


They then use this young woman’s phone to get Patrick to meet with her, thus exposing the barista to her stalker--without the woman even realizing what’s going on. Mike is using the excuse of protecting his wife and child as a justification for this, but he’s exposing another innocent woman to deadly danger by doing so. But that’s OK, though, right? Who cares if this woman runs the risk of being attacked by this psycho, or--at the very least-- she’s now out a cell phone and needs to get a new one, because she’s just a day player, right? I.T. actually had the potential to be much better than it is, but winds up being just another mindless thriller. --SF



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Presence -- A Review

Presence, the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh ( Sex, Lies and Videotape, Out Of Sight ), is based on his real life experiences with what he believes is a ghost in his own home. Inspired by his spectral roommate, Soderbergh wrote a few pages of a script, which he handed to David Koepp ( Panic Room, Jurassic Park ), who finished it. The film was shot in a house in Crandall, New Jersey, over just eleven days in September 2023 (they received an interim SAG-AFTRA agreement during the strike that year). Soderbergh shot this in the ‘found footage’ style, using only one camera, with himself as the camera operator. The result is that Presence is a haunted house story that is told from the point of view of the ghost. And it’s marvelous. But instead of the typical ’found footage’ movie, which is supposed to be culled together from film or video that is literally found after the fact, we see everything that’s happening in this house through the ‘eye...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cleaner -- a review

In Cleaner Daisy Ridley ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) stars as Joanna “Joey” Locke, a window cleaner at a swanky London office building that serves as the headquarters for an energy company. Joey becomes late for work when she’s forced to take her autistic brother Michael (Matthew Tuck) to her job with her. Because of her lateness, her nimrod of a manager makes Joey work an hour late, well into the evening. Joey reluctantly keeps cleaning windows of bird splatter in the darkness, but eventually bird droppings wind up being the least of her problems. A team of terrorists arrive at a party that’s being held at the office for the energy company’s share holders. Disguised as performers, the terrorists seize the energy company’s board members as hostages, while knocking everybody else out with gas. Joey, still working on the windows outside, sees all of this and promptly goes into action. Because, as the film has earlier established, Joey is a former Britis...
Post a Comment
Read more