Still on top of the box office success of “Top Gun: Maverick” in recent weeks, director Joseph Kosinski has launched another, less bombastic project on Netflix, created in Australia during the two years of pandemic that delayed the release of the film. Tom Cruise vehicle.
Adapted from a short story by George Saunders, originally published in The New Yorker, Spiderhead envisions a not-so-unrealistic reality in which a pharmaceutical company experiments on prisoners with chemicals that can drastically change a person’s behavior.
In an increasingly rare screening of the Australian actor without his Thor clothes, Chris Hemsworth plays the villain Steve Abnesti, responsible for this ethically dubious activity, but still a pawn of the larger corporation, which he claims is forcing him to relocate. the health limits of his test subjects. He is all smiling and kind, but he is hiding something sinister. Up in the lair of Bond villains overlooking the ocean, on the island where this supposedly more humane prison is located, it’s the kind of deceptive character that people like Jake Gyllenhaal or Oscar Isaac could make memorable; Hemsworth, not so much.
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Stephen and his assistant Mark (Mark Pagio) attach a device to the prisoners’ spine that distributes a cocktail of drugs they prepare for each prisoner. The fact that Stephen controls every substance administered by his mobile phone feels both accurate about our reliance on portable devices and absurdly simple, given what is at stake. Before a new dose enters the prisoner’s circulation, Steve asks everyone to verbally “confirm” their consent, creating the illusion of freedom.
Tested by guilt for a car accident that put him in jail, Jeff (Miles Teller) became Steve’s favorite. In the beginning, he withstood a drug that reproduced sexual arousal and postcoital attachment with multiple partners; these scenes end up in homophobic images of rape in prison that sound lazy. But Jeff’s romantic interest is based on Lizzie (Jerny Smollett), another inmate, and Steve will later use their relationship to try another mix that causes paranoia.
The story continues
“Spiderhead”, full of nostalgia from the 80’s with its great soundtrack, is reminiscent of titles such as “The Island”, “Ex Machina”, “High Life” and “Swan Song”. But he feels derived and only superficially invested in his great ideas of second chance and the conundrum of appropriating the bodies of individuals whom society has considered unprofitable.
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Co-authors Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (“Deadpool”) delve into tonal fluctuations that mimic how drug trials distort the emotions of those being tested, as they intertwine the humor of some of the scenarios with the much darker nuances inherent in the premise.
Almost entirely within a windowless space, the film looks cinematically boring, unfolding in white rooms and corridors that could be pulled from any office building. Even the touch of Oscar-winning filmmaker Claudio Miranda, whose ambition is often the case, as in “Top Gun: Maverick,” seems flattened, almost as if by design, except in remarkable retrospective. It seems that the filmmakers are looking for a certain elegance that never fully appears, given the generic kits and technical devices that look strange lo-fi. The director also resorted to needle drops too often to pump the film with artificially cool air.
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Teller, a great actor who solidifies this effort with convincing performance, wears a grim look. It is only when he is on screen that the consequences of this perverse game turn out to be as disgusting as they are. At one point during the ordeal, Jeff and Steve spend an evening together under the influence of a drug that elicits uncontrollable laughter; as the former admits that abandoning his father was his greatest wound, Jeff’s piercing gaze conveys his burning desire for freedom.
None of the other prisoners, all of whom are supposed to have agreed to this agreement, get much time on screen or background. Given that the only prisoners at the center are those whose crimes are attributed to neglect rather than malice (Jeff and Lizzie), then the message of the story of forgiveness does not apply to others. As narrow-minded and philosophically comfortable as it may seem, the creators show little intention of engaging in the aftermath of their “provocative” but less clearly self-confident face. This level of engagement may have been enough for a short story, but here the lack of depth is obvious.
Spiderhead can be fun, as long as you don’t explore too deeply. Like many recent Netflix originals, it’s neither substantial nor unique enough to deserve much attention after its first weekend of release – just another sci-fi thriller with a carefree antagonist. It’s a pity that the audience can’t spray the giggling liquid on the screen.
Spiderhead premieres on Netflix USA on June 17.
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