The story and dialog are a total jumble. It's difficult to follow because there was clearly only a vague vision, and the execution shows no skill in leading the audience there. It's clunky. You end up with a lot of coolish-sounding lines from our hard-boiled protagonist, but most of them seem like non-sequiturs. The way the plot unfolds is a series of too-great coincidences, while all the while I can't even understand which parties are involved. And playing off the notoriety of Tesla feels like a cheap gimmick. Truly a crap movie. Maybe the bones of the story could have been saved with a clever rewrite, and the production values, cinematography, and actors were on point, but it just falls so flat on its face pretending to be smart. It's not even so-bad-it's-good bad; it's just bad bad.
I'll give a few examples:
Camilla Belle puts her hand on the table, and Matthew Broderick swings a hatchet and barely misses it. What? Why would anyone do that as a gesture? What point is that meant to underscore? Trust? That's a stupid way to prove that to a stranger. No one would do that. It's clearly just a heavy-handed attempt to make you believe Matthew Broderick is the bad guy and Camilla Belle is the victim. It's out of nowhere. "My sister wouldn't steal from me because she knows that if she did the retribution would be Biblical." Who needs a visual aid like that?
And then it's followed by "What kind of a man would betray his sister's trust? ... We're family Mr. Paczynski.", and he responds with "That's a gene pool screaming for chlorine.", which is kind of a clever line but doesn't make any sense in the context, because it's rude to both, but he likes one of them at least. And it's so obviously inorganic that it entirely takes you out of the moment. It doesn't fit. It's clearly prepared.
And then he's suddenly washing his face, and he looks up and ahead like he's looking in the mirror, and they do that thing where they put the mirror off center, so they can capture his reflection without getting the reflection of the camera, except they put the mirror way too far to the right, and the lines of the tile make it super obvious he's just staring straight ahead at tile instead of at the mirror. It's goofy.
The tech they're supposedly after isn't in the least convincing. How does an energy field make a super soldier?
He eventually finds out Matthew Broderick isn't the villain, and then he goes screaming for Nikki at some power station. Why does he expect to find her there, even if it was near Tesla's old original hydro power plant? And then there are some guys in suits again. Why are they there? And then they chase him to the end of a long jetty. Why the did he go that way instead of in a more sensible direction? Then next thing we know he's in a barrel going over the falls. Why? Where did those guys produce the barrel from? They clearly didn't have it during the chase. How did they steal it from that other guy? Since our man wakes up in it, I guess they knocked him unconscious off screen? Did they want him to die but wanted to make it look like an accident? What's their motivation for this?
Then in the final scene Camilla Belle says "Your friend Kat got in the way too." It sounds like she's implying that killing wasn't an accidental byproduct of trying to get Soberin, but it doesn't make sense she'd intentionally target the stripper who happened to be there, so it's sloppy to have that in the dialog.
Why are they even next to the falls for this final dramatic scene? Where are they even going? They at one point lock a really hefty gate behind them, but it takes Paczynski all of one second to get through it. How?
It's just constant. The movie is a complete narrative mess. It's unsurprising that the main actor is also the writer. My guess is this whole thing is some kind of misguided vanity project.
I'll give a few examples:
Camilla Belle puts her hand on the table, and Matthew Broderick swings a hatchet and barely misses it. What? Why would anyone do that as a gesture? What point is that meant to underscore? Trust? That's a stupid way to prove that to a stranger. No one would do that. It's clearly just a heavy-handed attempt to make you believe Matthew Broderick is the bad guy and Camilla Belle is the victim. It's out of nowhere. "My sister wouldn't steal from me because she knows that if she did the retribution would be Biblical." Who needs a visual aid like that?
And then it's followed by "What kind of a man would betray his sister's trust? ... We're family Mr. Paczynski.", and he responds with "That's a gene pool screaming for chlorine.", which is kind of a clever line but doesn't make any sense in the context, because it's rude to both, but he likes one of them at least. And it's so obviously inorganic that it entirely takes you out of the moment. It doesn't fit. It's clearly prepared.
And then he's suddenly washing his face, and he looks up and ahead like he's looking in the mirror, and they do that thing where they put the mirror off center, so they can capture his reflection without getting the reflection of the camera, except they put the mirror way too far to the right, and the lines of the tile make it super obvious he's just staring straight ahead at tile instead of at the mirror. It's goofy.
The tech they're supposedly after isn't in the least convincing. How does an energy field make a super soldier?
He eventually finds out Matthew Broderick isn't the villain, and then he goes screaming for Nikki at some power station. Why does he expect to find her there, even if it was near Tesla's old original hydro power plant? And then there are some guys in suits again. Why are they there? And then they chase him to the end of a long jetty. Why the did he go that way instead of in a more sensible direction? Then next thing we know he's in a barrel going over the falls. Why? Where did those guys produce the barrel from? They clearly didn't have it during the chase. How did they steal it from that other guy? Since our man wakes up in it, I guess they knocked him unconscious off screen? Did they want him to die but wanted to make it look like an accident? What's their motivation for this?
Then in the final scene Camilla Belle says "Your friend Kat got in the way too." It sounds like she's implying that killing wasn't an accidental byproduct of trying to get Soberin, but it doesn't make sense she'd intentionally target the stripper who happened to be there, so it's sloppy to have that in the dialog.
Why are they even next to the falls for this final dramatic scene? Where are they even going? They at one point lock a really hefty gate behind them, but it takes Paczynski all of one second to get through it. How?
It's just constant. The movie is a complete narrative mess. It's unsurprising that the main actor is also the writer. My guess is this whole thing is some kind of misguided vanity project.