Eternal Code is about a medical science company that develops the technology to download someone's mind into another person's body. It's the key to eternal life, the only catch is, someone has to die in order for it to work. For one member of the board, the sinister Richard Tyson in a great turn as a baddie, he thinks this isn't such a bad deal; for another member of the board, played by Erika Hoveland, she has some issues with a company playing God, and is letting her conscience get in the way. That's when Tyson ramps up the pressure by having her and her husband kidnapped so she'll change her vote. The fly in the ointment of his plan: her daughter escapes, and finds a homeless vet in the park she knows--who has a certain set of skills. Will those skills be enough to take down Tyson?
I'm of split mind on this, because there are two things at play here. First, I really like the overarching message: while we say all life is precious and sacred, some lives are more important than others in our society, and this concept of the rich living forever at the expense of the poor is the logical conclusion of our for-profit healthcare system. This is both a metaphor for our current system, and a commentary, and I really appreciated that. On the other hand, the whole kidnapping intrigue aspect felt like it spiraled out of control a bit at the end. People were being moved around like the MacGuffin in a Marx Bros. comedy. To me it betrayed the message, and bogged the film down, especially considering the film is 105 minutes long, already breaking the 88-minute rule. But I have to applaud the depth of the message and what this was trying to say. It's not easy to pull that off in a film that has limited resources like this one. I just wish they had leaned on that message more and less on the kidnapping parts.
Richard Tyson is a major standout in this as the baddie. I'm going to talk a bit more about that later, but he was bad from the first scene--they didn't even need to tell us he was a baddie, he just exuded it so much. To that end, I think that's another area where the kidnapping didn't need to be as drawn out, because we didn't need it as much to establish him as bad, he was already establishing himself in every scene. We last saw him here in the Seagal flick The Perfect Weapon, but that part wasn't as big as what he had here. He found a role he could sink his teeth into, and went for it, which is always great to see.
The director and writer of this is Harley Wallen, who also stars as one of the kidnappers. I was trying to figure out why I thought he looked familiar, and I saw that he had an uncredited part in Superman V Batman: Dawn of Justice, so that's probably it. According to IMDb he's got a fair amount of films that he's written and directed like this--including three others that were released in 2019 alone! Again, this one didn't fully work for me, but there were things in it that I really liked, so I'll be interested to check out the others to see how they are too. It looks like they're all on Prime, which helps.
There are a lot of messages in this about how we perceive money and power in our society, and while this has the standard "don't judge a book by its cover" with our hero, played by Damien Chinappi, as a homeless vet whom the daughter befriends after she and her friend make him food, and then when she needs to turn to him after her parents are kidnapped, it turns out he has the training to save the day. Beyond that basic message, this goes a step further, as his look is transformed when he's cleaned up and put in a suit. That transformation is as much a part of the message in this film as anything. We see Chinappi's character one way when he has one look, and then the exact same person is perceived differently when his look changes, again getting to this idea that some people are worth more than others in our society based on the rubrics we use to judge them. To that end you may even say that the movie's message is already a metaphor for the Iraq war vet, in the sense that the rich already sacrifice the lives of the poor so they can live longer when they send them to war.
*****SPOILER ALERT*******SPOILER ALERT********SPOILER ALERT***********
I want to discuss the ending here, so if you don't want to know it first, skip to the bottom. As I mentioned above, Richard Tyson was a great baddie, and what do we always want to see happen to a great baddie? That he gets his comeuppance. And in this one, while Hoveland escapes and the baddies seem to be defeated, Tyson is able to get what he wants before that: to have his mind transferred into the body of a healthier person. Perhaps this was setting up for a sequel, but even if it was, I needed some kind of a period in this film first, which involved Tyson not getting away with it. Yes, we know in real life the rich and powerful usually do get away with it, but that's why we come to movies, so we can see them not get away with it.
*****SPOILER ALERT*******SPOILER ALERT********SPOILER ALERT***********
We now return you to your regularly scheduled review, as it's time to wrap this one up. I think the best thing to do is read my review and, knowing my tastes from the other reviews of mine I read, determine if what I said worked and didn't work for me would make it a go for you. Right now you can stream it on Prime, and we know that's always a good way to catch it, as you're only investing time after you spent on the subscription. And thank you again to Joe Williamson for having me look at this! I'm realizing now I forgot to mention Mel Novak, but he's not in it that much, so that's okay.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8655738
No comments:
Post a Comment