Cypher

Vincenzo Natali

Rob Lyons

A rather dull and nervous man gets a job at a mega-corporation to spy on their competitors. All he has to do is pretend to be someone else and surreptitiously record a few conference speeches. Easy enough.

Then he meets a glamourous woman who convinces him that he has been tricked and that in fact his employers' intentions for him are much more sinister. Soon, he becomes embroiled in a complex web of relationships, not knowing who is being straight with him and who is deceiving him - or even, what is real and unreal.

This is a variation on the theme of identity and memory that includes in different ways Total Recall and Memento. However, while Natali's film is elegant, almost entirely shot in near-monochrome, it ultimately seems pointless. Why the various mega-corporations are attempting to screw each other, to the point where they do not seem to have any other purpose, is not clear. The same could easily be said of our hero. When his motivations are revealed at the end, they seem a perfunctory explanation for what has gone before.

The whole feel of the film is detached, slightly dystopian and decidely alienated. Not only are we cogs in the wheel, but the whole operation of society is without purpose. Men and women attend conferences to talk about things that don't matter, to sell things that don't matter, to pass around pieces of data that don't matter. The stylised nature of the production however only suggests that the film itself doesn't matter, either. Its underlying themes are not nearly as clever as the makers would like us to believe. No wonder my companion dozed off halfway through.

Cypher almost self-consciously wants to be a cult film. Maybe it will become one. It is not the worst couple of hours you could spend in a cinema by any means, but it is neither truly thought-provoking, nor particularly entertaining.