Overview
A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.
Terry Gilliam teaming up with Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton?! Bring on the next Twelve Monkeys!
Oh boy… what a failure this movie is…
It starts off ok – we find ourselves in a weird and wacky future in a style true to Gilliam, and meet various ‘unique’ characters, and enjoy some jokes in the background here and there (“Arbeit Macht Fun!”).
The main character is Qohan, a ‘hacker’ played by Waltz. He is looking for the meaning of life, but alas this movie is apparently not of the calibre of that Terry Gilliam of those Monty Python days….
Waltz never seems to properly own this role. Where Tarantino managed to draw strength of character from Waltz’ German tongue and make the Austrian krimi-regular into a world class performer in Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, here he just seems out of place. Really, he is just boring from about halfway through the movie onwards. And since there isn’t really a purpose to the plot either, the movie falls apart once you lose interest in its lead character…
We also get a guest performance from Matt Damon, but let’s not mention that any further.
At best it is pretentious visual fodder about finding happiness. More realistically, it is a cinematic failure. We may need to accept that Terry Gilliam is well, well past his prime now.
Left me with the grumps this movie…
