Paranoia boasts an impressive cast,
perfectly balanced with both veteran actors and young stars. Gary Oldman and
Harrison Ford carry each scene they are in, while Liam Hemsworth and Amber
Heard are pretty to look at while the real actors perform. In the end, however,
it is all cancelled out by an uninteresting script that hardly has enough
thrills to qualify this as a thriller. Only a twelve-year-old would think this
film is intelligent, and the rest of us are just bored. It fits in perfectly as
a double feature with Brian De Palma’s equally unimpressive Passion.
Based on the
best-selling novel by Joseph Finder, Paranoia is a cat-and-mouse thriller in
the business world, and Adam Cassidy (Hemsworth) is the mouse stuck between two
deadly feline aggressors. Cassidy works as a lowly employee at a powerful
technology corporation dealing primarily with cell phones, but even that job is
threatened because of the way he thinks outside of the box. When his boss
Nicolas Wyatt (Oldman) fires him, it comes with an interesting offer of
espionage. Blackmailed into working for the competition in order to steal their
trade secrets, Cassidy finds himself working for another business tycoon; Jock
Goddard (Ford).
These two power
players bounce back and forth in a game that manipulates and uses Cassidy, and
each is certain of their own guaranteed success. Really, it’s just a bunch of
unnecessary scenes of Oldman and Ford chewing the scenery in-between the forced
plot twists that are never as exciting or surprising as you might hope. The end
result of this film leaves the viewer feel more than a little cheated. Heard’s
character is especially vapid as a surface-level-only romantic entanglement for
our protagonist amidst the espionage.
The Blu-ray combo
pack has a DVD and digital copy of the film also included, though the special
features are understandably understated. There are a few deleted scenes and
three brief promotional featurettes, though none are truly worth getting
excited about.
Entertainment Value:
5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 4/10
Historical
Significance: 1/10
Disc Features: 2/10
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