Wolff rating: FAIR
Plot summary: Video game designer finds herself on the run from terrorists who want her dead.
Biased, pithy comments: What is it about video games in movies and TV that are so boring? The games they describe and show almost never look fun, capture the imagination, or even make sense. (Exception---``The Last Starfighter.'') Although Cronenberg has clearly seen some games, he hasn't played them. The scenario he describes doesn't seem rational or sensible. If anything, real video games strive very hard to make sense, because (as demonstrated by a raft of shareware and obscure Japanese console titles) it's easy to be incoherent with interactive media. Likewise, I've been in the gaming industry for a while now, and gals as stunningly beautiful as Jennifer Jason Leigh tend to be marketing, not development. And, of course, video games are the most collaborative art ever made; it takes scads of people to build them because they require so much detail work to be constructed from nothing---it's like building a movie set where you first have to invent wood, light, paint, cameras, and movies. However, I'm not going to harp much more on this theme; in fact, it was kind of fun to see video game designers as objects of fear and fatwa. (Most of the time in real life, no one knows who they are.) No, what really sinks this movie is that it's a more than a little slow, and looks cheap despite having some sort of a budget. Although Cronenberg has examined the line between reality and fantasy before (most notably ``Videodrome'', which was as latex-happy as this film), he really doesn't bring anything new to the theme, but instead makes a murky, incoherent movie that's slower than dirt at times. That and I saw the ending twist(s) coming about an hour away, and I was so sad that Cronenberg felt the need to whack us with something so obvious.
Other Notes: The arthouse crowd might tell you that this is a film for gamers; like I said, outside of lavishing a little attention on an under-appreciated hobby, it's really not that much fun. Frankly, the flat-screen 3D games out right now like ``Shenmue,'' ``Perfect Dark,'' and even the venerable ``Quake'' would be more fun to play for two hours than to play the game described within for more than a few minutes.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law
Directed by: David Cronenberg