This is one of those movies that's high on ideas and jargon and low on substance and intelligibility, and whose story is only really comprehensible if you've seen stuff that tell what it's trying to say in an actually intelligible manner. I loved it.
Billy Zane is a jackbooted enforcer for The Hemisphere, a totalitarian state that has banned the very concepts of media and entertainment for Reasons. He has repeated episodes upon exposure to media, which logically makes him the perfect choice to have him transferred to the CKS (implied to be some sort of secret police, though the movie never explains) and undergo a radical neurosurgery procedure to have him sub for a captured criminal and send him to Megaville, set up as a contrasting hedonistic dystopia where the little people can get all the violence and sex on TV. His job there is to intercept a deal for "Dream-A-Life", a series of highly addictive themed VR experiences that have the production values of a Sega CD game.
Reasons why a bad movie lover may want to check this bad boy out:
-One J.C. Quinn plays the deuteragonist, a hard-boiled hitman and cleaner who bookends the movie with an awesome monologue full of creative turn of sentences and colorful imagery (opening line: "Some fool once told me that the only reason we're here is to make friends and progeny. some fool huh? I'll admit there's a bastard or two running around with my DNA but as for friends? Count 'em, try. "). He says ton of cool things that make little sense. He's the best character.
-The movie was shot on a dime so all you see of "The Hemisphere" are dingy interior shots, and Megaville is represented through the dystopian sights of 90's Los Angeles. No fancy billboards, no kitting cars to make them look" futuristic". It's literally just L.A at 5 AM.
-The story is full of strange logic and holes. For instance early in the movie the president of Megavillle is suffocated during a live broadcast for telling people to not fuck their brain with shitty VR games, and the only witness is his janitor. You'd think the state would do something about the very visible murder of their head of state, but not only do they just leave the janitor zoinked on VR at the scene of crime with no guards or surveillance, but when the aforementioned hitman casually guns him down in broad daylight, nothing happens.
-The characters keep mentioning something called The Sphere. I've consumed enough shitty Cyberpunk to guess this is probably referring to shitty futuristic internet, but it could also just be a shorthand for "The Hemisphere". The dialogue is so vague and the movie never explains.
-This script is a great example of why "Show don't tell" is such a oft-repeated aphorism. As I mentioned above, Megaville is descried by the characters as a hub of decadence where people destroy their brain with hentai and violent video games, but beside a brief sequence where you see the aforementioned janitor get hooked on shitty VR Civil War larps, this is just never shown. It's a very boring and sedate modern-day dystopia.
-Daniel J. Travanti plays the main villain, the head of the Hemisphere's secret police, who keeps getting more ill throughout the movie for reasons that are never explained (seeing a pattern here?) and hams it up accordingly.
And before anyone ask, yes it,' on Tubi (the Canadian one anyway).
