Director: Gore Verbinski
Release Year: 2025
Runtime: 2h 14m
We all know what America looks like, right? Less so, but through the glory of movies and TV, we also have a general sense of what greater Los Angeles looks and feels like. As a native Los Angeleno — and a person who spent many nights and mornings of my teenaged life in coffee shops like NORMS — I have a pretty keen sense of the place. This, friends, is not Los Angeles. Not even close. And in its complete and utter lack of sense of place and muddled landscapes and mapping, it really took me out of it. Cape Town — the location they thought could somehow double as LA — feels particularly foreign and bleak and dystopian in a bad way that worked against the drama of the narrative. At least for me. Sorry, it’s just dumb to place a film in a specific location and then make the location not at all resemble that location. I haven’t seen a disconnect this bad since The Strain tried to pass off some dreary Canadian city for Manhattan and failed to maybe, possibly ever visit NYC to see what it actually looks like. So, 10/10 to the writers for placing the movie in a theoretically real LA coffee shop chain, but 0/10 for not actually filming in a NORMS and putting anything and everything outside that coffee shop in some industrial wasteland that looks nothing like West L.A. or, really, anything that has ever existed in the U.S.
Putting aside my complaints about the location manager and set design, let’s try to sum up the plot in a few sentences. Haha, you know I can’t do that. First, if you’ve ever seen Brazil, you’ll be like, did director Gore Verbinski think we wouldn’t notice how Terry Gilliam-coded the man from the future’s (Sam Rockwell) outfit and character is? Maybe it’s an homage? But probably not. Anyhow, this man from the future shows up at a NORMS in West LA at dinnertime dressed like a cyberpunk homeless dude. Now, as I mentioned, I’ve been to NORMS many times. Never in my life have there been this many people there on any evening ever. Especially at dinner. And families? Nah, it was either drunks or old people. Or both. But never kids and whatnot. Again, a complaint specific to me, but one that made me wonder how much care these people were going to put behind this thing. Anyway, this seeming crazy dude says he’s been here 116 times previously and chosen a group of people at random to bring on his adventure to save the universe from AI. Or something. Ah, the ole time loop thing!
Once he’s chosen his cohort for his 117th attempt, we get some flashbacks of who these people are. One of them, Susan (Juno Temple), has a whole Black Mirror “Common People” thing going on with her son. If you’ve seen that episode, it is a direct rip. Another situation with couple, Mark (Michael Pena) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), feels entirely like The Faculty. Or a reverse The Faculty. A movie I’ve admittedly never seen, but it just seems to fit. Regardless of their originality, these situations are meant as pretty obvious social commentary about the future dangers of AI and the kids’ addiction to their smartphones. Stories that give these people a direct connection to the mission of the man from the future, who is trying to kill AI in the cradle. Or kill whatever version of it leads to the global destruction of our humanity. Not subtle stuff. Nor, I suppose, is it supposed to be. But, yeah, the man in the Terry Gilliam outfit is there to insert a safety protocol into the code of what eventually becomes the AI destroyer. He is equipped with a failsafe switch that he can trigger to reset the time loop if he sees the mission is going to fail. Which it has 116 times prior. But, he’s maybe, possibly convinced this combination of people will lead to success this time. Even though, we as the audience, know exactly which of this crew is going to die in the process. Because we don’t recognize them as actors. Pretty simple math on that front.
Alright, I’m down with this whole concept. It’s fun. Ish. But once we get past the whole time loop, video game premise a la Edge of Tomorrow, this just kind of turns into a bad version of that same video game. It goes from this existential sci-fi whatever to a group of folks running around a nightmare landscape that makes no logical sense whatsoever. Like a bad, loud uninteresting version of After Hours. And then there’s a direct rip from Ghostbusters of all things. But instead of a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, they conjure a giant centaur made of kittens. Which looks like relatively weak AI. Because there is time travel in this film, you also have a Terminator-type casual loop twist, which is pretty evident from minute one if you just think of the characters and the context of what type of movie you’re watching. And, honestly, the whole AI thing is pretty convoluted and uses almost hokey Lawnmower Man / The Matrix mechanics that just don’t work here because we don’t know or understand the world we’ve been dropped into. Honestly, the whole thing is built on these tropes and almost direct references to past movies, making it feel more like a Scary Movie spoof at times than an honest-to-goodness attempt to tell an original, clever story.
This all said, Rockwell is his usual manic self. He’s entertaining and can do both comic and emotional when needed. Haley Lu Richardson is decent as well. Granted, her character is allergic to wi-fi and cellular data, which is pretty dumb, but that not the actor’s fault. Juno Temple is pretty good as well, though she’s not asked to be fun or funny. Otherwise, most of the other actors are pretty much background and aren’t given much to do. I do appreciate the one Easter egg — unintended or not – where they name the waitress at Norm’s Delores. Delores’ being a classic West LA coffee shop my buddies and I hung out way too many times late night in the 80s where the waitstaff may or may not have been vampires. Anyhow, I’m not really sure $20 million was enough to make this a successful film. Which is ridiculous to say out loud, but I feel like some better CGI and filming locations that didn’t make the thing feel like they were obviously pressed for budget would have gone a long way. And perhaps leaning in on Rockwell and Richardson and shedding some of the other dead weight and silly backgrounders would have made the thing feel tighter and less frivolous. And, honestly, the whole nine-year-old boy creating the AI on a pile of wires and spare computer parts is just fucking stupid and boring. That whole scene, which anchors the third act, is truly awful. And nonsensical. This one could use a re-cut and a serious script edit. Otherwise, it just kind of spins itself into oblivion and leaves one wondering if perhaps AI has already taken over and we’re just not aware.
