From Andrew Niccol, who gave us Gattaca and The Truman Show, comes Anon, a pulpy noir detective thriller. Except that it’s not thrilling. Anon is one of those films where you imagine that the writer sat around thinking about how cool and edgy his script was, completely missing the fact that the story jumps around from scene to scene with very little cohesion or sense. Characters will say one “cool” thing after another, mixed in with some heady technobabble which doesn’t seem to mean much of anything. The script is corny as anything and features an almost comical amount of nudity and sex scenes.

For having a very bland story, it’s no surprise that the performances are just as bad. Clive Owen is more wooden than an IKEA bookcase, and Colm Feore is just as bad as the uptight, stereotypical police Captain that Owen’s Detective Friedland answers to. The only one who doesn’t seem to be phoning it in is Amanda Seyfried, who delivers by far the best performance, but just looks a bit embarrassed to be there.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. The look of how social media and the contents of someone’s life is available inside your head is innovative and entertaining, and the nicely subtle techno soundtrack by Christophe Beck works well, however it’s disappointing that exactly how this level of technological advancement exists and just how it actually works is never addressed, which may have made for a much more interesting story.

Anon has been around before, you can see shades of it in I-Robot, Gattaca and others like them, but it just fails to deliver. A good soundtrack and visual effects cannot save this film from being a bit of an empty shell. We have a feeling that it’ll remain anonymous.

RATING: 2/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried, Colm Feore

DIRECTOR: Andrew Niccol

WRITER: Andrew Niccol

SYNOPSIS: In the near future where anonymity no longer exists, a troubled detective with a dark past (Clive Owen) must track down a mysterious killer (Amanda Seyfried) who is committing a series of seemingly impossible murders.