Brief Story Line
Story was set in the future, where people invented a machine which could help relive memories. Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman - Logan, The Greatest Showman etc) and Watts (Thandiwe Newton - Solo: A Star Wars Story, Crash etc) were operating a business using their own machine. When a young woman named Mae (Rebecca Ferguson - The Kid Who Would be King, Doctor Sleep etc) came to their place and wanted to use the machine, Nick immediately fell for her and started to develop relationship despite Watts' mistrust.
However, things did not go so well for Nick as Mae somehow disappeared and resulted to his frustration. As he was trying to locate Mae, Nick found that it might have something to do with a dangerous criminal leader named Saint Joe (Daniel Wu - Tomb Raider 2018 version, Geostorm etc).
So how would the story conclude? You can find it out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this movie started off pretty exciting, with the setting of the future which reminded me of those cyberpunk movies/series. And the creation of the machine that could relive memories was interesting too, despite it might not be too original. I like the way the narrative done by Nick Bannister that has a strong private detective story feel. At first though, I was a bit confused since it did not have too much investigation and it focused a bit on the romance, but after a while I finally know the point of the story.
The mystery of Mae's disappearance was quite intriguing. However, it did not feel too complicated and there were not a lot of twists that could really surprise me. As the story continued, I think I felt it was a bit too slow and I dozed off few times. Not until there were some real progress in the investigation that I started to be more focused. And frankly, I thought it did get better from the middle till the conclusion, which was not bad and satisfying enough.
What I actually liked in this movie was surprisingly not the science fiction factor (it was what got me interested first), but actually the relationship between Nick and Mae. I think Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson did a good job and they had good chemistry as well, making them convincing as two people in love. Thandiwe Newton (who had returned to her original name instead of Thandie) was OK as Nick's partner. But I did not really like Daniel Wu's performance here, although it might have been because of the way his character was written. There were other familiar supporting cast too like Cliff Curtis (The Meg etc) as Saint Joe's henchman Cyrus Boothe, Brett Cullen (Joker etc) as wealthy businessman Walter Sylvan and few others.
As I said above, watching this movie reminded me of various films & series. And apparently critics also noticed them but with negative views. For me personally, it was still OK. Yes, I was a bit surprised with the focus more on the romance, but good thing it was still nice to watch. The use of the machine was interesting as well and the visual effects were quite good (no wonder as it has a huge budget, but sadly it did not break even due to poor box office performance). Btw I found out later the reason why there was a strong Westworld feel. Apparently the writer & director of this movie was Lisa Joy who was the co-creator of that TV series. It's too bad that her feature film directorial debut was not a success.
Overall this movie was actually not that bad to my opinion. It might be confusing (and a bit boring) in the early part, but I thought it got better as the story progressed. If the movie was made into a Television series, I think it could be better received as they could explore more on the new world (with its history/background story), the machine and had more variety of cases. So if you are OK with this attribute on a movie, then you could give it a try. But if you trust the critics more, then might be better to avoid this one.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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