***Spoilers Warning*** The story: In the near future, police are trying to trace the origin of a narcotic called Substance D, which ultimately destroys the persons brain. Bruce is an undercover cop, who goes by the name Fred, sent to infiltrate a small group of substance users (undercover as a fellow user called Bob Arctor) in order to get more information from Donna, who is a drug supplier. During his mission, Bruce/Fred/Bob gets hooked on the drug as well, as he pals around with his 'buddies'. Drug users can go to a rehab place called New Path and live out their lives, if they are too far gone. After Fred has gone to far and his brain is deteriorating, he is sent to New Path. Now we find out, at the end of the movie, that his supervisors planned this and secretly manipulated him to this point so that he could enter New Path, whom the police believe are the ones actually creating the narcotic.
The story sounds interesting, however the movie has many huge flaws: 1) It takes 70 out of the 90 minutes to get to the point. The first 70 minutes are almost all about "Bob Acrtor" undercover and just 'hanging around' with his drug user buddies as they philosophy about life, bicycles and who is 'out to get them'. At the 48 minute mark, I actually said aloud to myself, "What is the POINT of this movie?" This movie was like a 22 minute Twilight Zone episode, or even a 45 minute Outer Limits episode, that was 'padded' to a 90 minute movie.
2) There was no point to the animation, whatsoever. The whole movie could have been done as straight live-action.
3) There was no point to the "scramble suits" whatsoever. It seems like the whole reason for these suits would be so that no one would know (till the end) that "Freds" supervisor was really Donna (or vice versa) or that the supervisor would not know that they were putting Fred on a case to spy on himself. This could have been handled with a *much* simpler excuse, without resorting to ridiculous sci-fi gimmickery.
4) The movie is presented as a sci-fi, "rubber reality" type of movie. However, if you remove the "scramble suits" and used live action instead of the distracting animation style, this would have been just a normal, drama movie. Nothing else.
Some people may say that "I just don't 'get' it". No, I understand the movie completely. If there is still something that I do not 'get', then it is the movie producers fault, not mine. Those that rated this movie highly because they found some sort of "philosophic" and deeper meaning is because they WANTED to find a deeper meaning to the movie.
I rated the movie 3 out of 10. It was boring, took a long time to get to the point, but was interesting to a degree.
The story sounds interesting, however the movie has many huge flaws: 1) It takes 70 out of the 90 minutes to get to the point. The first 70 minutes are almost all about "Bob Acrtor" undercover and just 'hanging around' with his drug user buddies as they philosophy about life, bicycles and who is 'out to get them'. At the 48 minute mark, I actually said aloud to myself, "What is the POINT of this movie?" This movie was like a 22 minute Twilight Zone episode, or even a 45 minute Outer Limits episode, that was 'padded' to a 90 minute movie.
2) There was no point to the animation, whatsoever. The whole movie could have been done as straight live-action.
3) There was no point to the "scramble suits" whatsoever. It seems like the whole reason for these suits would be so that no one would know (till the end) that "Freds" supervisor was really Donna (or vice versa) or that the supervisor would not know that they were putting Fred on a case to spy on himself. This could have been handled with a *much* simpler excuse, without resorting to ridiculous sci-fi gimmickery.
4) The movie is presented as a sci-fi, "rubber reality" type of movie. However, if you remove the "scramble suits" and used live action instead of the distracting animation style, this would have been just a normal, drama movie. Nothing else.
Some people may say that "I just don't 'get' it". No, I understand the movie completely. If there is still something that I do not 'get', then it is the movie producers fault, not mine. Those that rated this movie highly because they found some sort of "philosophic" and deeper meaning is because they WANTED to find a deeper meaning to the movie.
I rated the movie 3 out of 10. It was boring, took a long time to get to the point, but was interesting to a degree.