Search - Hardwired on DVD

Karen G. (Kancer76) from GROTON, CT
Reviewed on 6/21/2013...

Story line good. Effects could have been better. Overall, about 3 stars

Softwired

Eric Sanberg | Berwyn, IL United States | 05/17/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This movie fails on essentially every level it can fail. The idea is bad. The script is bad. The costumes and hair styles are bad. Even most of the acting is bad. How this ever got a green light is beyond me, particularly given that, though not a tremendously expensive production by any means, the money spent making it is far above what it deserves.

Science Fiction, or in this case Speculative Fiction, has always been a fertile ground for film making. And a lot of guys have figured out how to do it. Even some movies with really wild plots have been able to get the audience to suspend their disbelief. But if a viewer believes any of this they have serious issues.

Here's the scoop. The corporations own the world and one of them, "Hope Industries", figures that normal advertising is no longer effective and cooks a scheme to plant ads directly into someone's brain via a circuit implant. It's still in the test phase so they're working out the bugs. They stage a car accident with Cuba Gooding Jr. to provide the opportunity to implant the chip in him and the plot takes off from there.

He gets help from an outlaw group of rebels intent on bringing Hope Industries to its knees. There are only 4 of them so it's a daunting task to be certain, but they're computer geniuses and can hack and gain all sorts of intel at lightning speeds. And Hope Industries, with it's near limitless resources, seems to have weak spots all over its operations. It's amazing how even low level people in the company, even actors it their commercials, have information pertinent to the company's goings on.

That's as far as I'm going there. Just let it be known that this movie is dumb beyond the meaning of the word. All those involved must have led lives devoid of the movie going experience. Now granted, I've seen way too many movies in my life, and I've got more than a few years under my belt, but even someone with way less viewing experience than myself can see that this is simply an inept venture into the genre.

Wasn't Cuba Gooding a good actor once upon a time? What happened to him here? And Val Kilmer. On the cover art he looks like the Val of days gone by. In the movie he looks like he crawled out of the bottom of a bottle. Michael Ironside phones in his performance. This is just a wasted effort all the way around. Don't waste your time or money."