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

Jack Reacher Never Go Back -- a Review

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa...
Post a Comment
Read more

3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem , Netflix’s latest TV series, is loosely based on the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, by Chinese author Liu Cixin (who also wrote the book The Wandering Earth ). Simply put, it’s an alien invasion story, but one that’s a lot more sophisticated than your average ‘pew-pew-pew’ cliché-fest. For one thing, this series begins in the 1960s, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, which was the nationwide purge instigated within China by then-Chairman Mao to keep himself in power. A young woman named Ye Wenjie arises from the chaos to become a central figure in the overall story. The 3 Body Problem of this series’ name refers to a far-flung solar system that has three suns. Any planet within this tri-sun system would have a hard time of it, taking turns orbiting one belligerent sun after another, and it just so happens that the aliens who set their eyes on invading Earth--known as the San-Ti--come from this embattled world. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Holdovers -- a review

It’s always a joy to watch someone who’s a master at their work, whether it’s a musician, an artist, or an actor. Most great actors make it look easy--which is not to say that I think acting is an easy job. I know from personal experience that acting is very hard. It’s a skill that the talented make look very easy, and one of the most talented actors working today is Paul Giamatti. If you’ve watched some movies over the past few years, chances are very good that you’ve already seen Paul Giamatti. He was the jittery earthquake expert in San Andreas , the sympathetic police chief in The Illusionist , and as the titular John Adams (a part that got him the Emmy and a Golden Globe) in the 2008 HBO series of the same name. Recently, I saw Paul Giamatti in the superb The Holdovers , a movie that I wasn’t planning on writing up, but I kept thinking about it--and all of its characters--long after I saw it. In The Holdovers , Giamatti plays Paul H...
Post a Comment
Read more