I saw this movie on Sci-Fi Channel...you're not missing much if you skip it over. The movie tries to be a combination of James Bond, "Johnny Mnemonic," and "The Matrix," and falls far short of those goals.
The dialogue made me wince virtually every minute, it was so corny...some of the lines of the "bad guy" hacker and his "avatar" followers sounded as if the scriptwriter just grabbed some random terms out of the Jargon File (or it's print equivalent, "The New Hacker's Dictionary") and stuffed them in with little regard for how techies actually talk. At other times, some characters speak in a computer "jargon" that's almost indecipherable. Most of the characters are cut from cardboard (Max's virtual helpmate Claire being a partial exception) and are unremarkable; even Max's backstory suffers from the same cornball effect as the rest of the dialogue.
To compensate for the lack of good writing, the filmmakers threw in lots of special effects, including a bunch of low-budget CGI work. Let's just say they got what they paid for. Periodically, the camera zooms in or out for no readily apparent reason; it's obviously trying to highlight what there is of the "dramatic tension" at certain moments, but it just fell flat with me.
Basically, if you take this movie for what it is, you might have some fun with it. (It's certainly crying out for the MST3K treatment.) If your expectations aren't low enough, this movie will be about as tough to swallow as two tablespoons of peanut butter.
The dialogue made me wince virtually every minute, it was so corny...some of the lines of the "bad guy" hacker and his "avatar" followers sounded as if the scriptwriter just grabbed some random terms out of the Jargon File (or it's print equivalent, "The New Hacker's Dictionary") and stuffed them in with little regard for how techies actually talk. At other times, some characters speak in a computer "jargon" that's almost indecipherable. Most of the characters are cut from cardboard (Max's virtual helpmate Claire being a partial exception) and are unremarkable; even Max's backstory suffers from the same cornball effect as the rest of the dialogue.
To compensate for the lack of good writing, the filmmakers threw in lots of special effects, including a bunch of low-budget CGI work. Let's just say they got what they paid for. Periodically, the camera zooms in or out for no readily apparent reason; it's obviously trying to highlight what there is of the "dramatic tension" at certain moments, but it just fell flat with me.
Basically, if you take this movie for what it is, you might have some fun with it. (It's certainly crying out for the MST3K treatment.) If your expectations aren't low enough, this movie will be about as tough to swallow as two tablespoons of peanut butter.