Hardwired

Sony

R4 DVD

Hardwired is an intriguing science fiction cyberpunk film with influences as diverse as Philip K Dick, William Gibson and the futuristic vision of Blade Runner. The film opens with a “Blade Runner” like future run by corporate big business and with a sky line saturated with advertising. In many ways this opening sequence is both a blessing and a curse, while the film looks great and is filmed in high definition, the budget was clearly limited and the corporate view of the future looks, well, a bit silly. Mastercard symbols on Mount Rushmore, the McDonalds “M” on a dam and so on give the film an amateur feel which it takes a while to shake off, however, if you stick with it, it does find its feet and actually becomes a rather creative sci fi story.

Luke Gibson (Cuba Gooding Jr) has been injured in a car accident, his pregnant wife is dead and somehow his medical insurance has been terminated. The hospital is just about to write him off when the Hope Corporation steps in and offers a new but untested medical procedure involving the implanting of a computer chip directly into the back of his brain. When he wakes up he finds he has no memory and worse is plagued by strange hallucinations which awfully seem like advertising. There is a man selling an expensive wristwatch, a hot little number in red selling Whiskey and then some damn kid sprouting the virtues of chewing gun. When Gibson tries to ask questions about what has happened to him he suffers from blinding headaches associated with intense pain, something is clearly wrong.

When he finds himself driven to steal the wristwatch advertised in his mind, things goes awry; it seems the Hope Corporation is using the subjects to test a new brain based computer which can be used to implant subtle advertising clues and hence control the market in a new way. The test subjects who fail to make the grade are literally blown to pieces as the chip explodes taking their heads with it. But someone has hacked his chip and not only saved his life but are beaming instructions inside his mind to help him escape the Corporation.

Soon he meets a group of nerdy computer hackers led by Michael Ironside and co-ordinated by a disabled computer genius who survived an attack by Hope Corporation but is now incapacitated and communicates via computer. Known by the hacker name of “Keyboard” he works with Gibson to confront those who killed his wife and finally to meet face to face with the corporate mastermind behind Project 660 (Val Kilmer).

Hardwired is an uneven film, the first 15 minutes are troublesome with some badly done CGI and a really silly over dramatization of the role of advertising in the future. Sure I can accept that the world may end up as a hyper urbanized city environment with a skyline filled with adverts, but the placing of corporate symbols over everything simply cheapens the concept. It would be easy to turn off during this period as the story seems clichéd and derivative. However, after a while the film seems to find its niche and begins to work exceptionally well. The way in which instructions can be beamed directly into Gibson’s field of vision by the hacker team leads to some great action sequences and by about 30 minutes into the film it becomes a damn good thriller. There are a lot of good ideas here from the concept of the in-brain computer chip (with advertising and spam) to the Avatar system which beams a 3D image of someone into the real world.

The special effects in Hardwired on the whole are good except for their over enthusiastic use at the start of the film, the cinematography is excellent and the quality of the film with its high definition presentation certainly helps it punch above its budget. The acting is overall is fairly solid, both Cuba Gooding Jr and Michael Ironside come across well. However, Val Kilmer is just plain horrible, he is a two-dimensional big corporate villain and what were they thinking when they did his hair?

Hardwired is not a perfect film, far from it, but as a modern cyberpunk tale it is different and certainly creative and innovative. In the days of remakes and “safe blockbusters” it is nice to see a director think “outside the box”.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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