Paranoia

"The lights always look brighter across the river." After saying the wrong things, Adam (Hemsworth) an up-and-coming employee at a powerful corporation finds himself and his friends out of a job. After the owner Nicolas Wyatt (Oldman) recruits him to spy on rival Jock Goddard (Ford) to find out what his company is coming up with Adam finds himself stuck in the middle of a dangerous game. When he wants out he realizes that it's not just his life is threatened unless he completes his task. I was looking forward to watching this for two reasons. Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, also Richard Dreyfuss is in this but in a lesser role. I cannot recall a movie they have been in that has been bad (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was bad but its still Indiana Jones so I can't hate it and I blame Lucas for that anyway). I did find out how to mess up a movie with those two legendary actors...add baby Thor (Liam Hemsworth). I'm not saying he was a bad actor in this because it wasn't terrible but when you have those two in a movie and you make baby Thor the main focus you have screwed up somewhere. I'd compare this to the movie Son Of No One in the way that you have Ray Liotta and Al Pacino and you make Channing Tatum the focus. Nothing personal against Hemsworth or Tatum but when you have such high caliber actors why waste them? As far as this movie goes the scenes with Oldman and Ford are amazing as expected, as far as the rest goes it was slow, a little boring and not exciting at all. With the plot being about the seedy underworld of the cellphone app industry though you don't have much to work with. Overall, a movie that could have been so much better but ended up being almost not worth seeing. It pains me to do this but I give it a C.

PARANOIA is one of those corporate suspense thrillers about rival businesses, spying, and the like. All of these films seem to owe a debt to WALL STREET in the depiction of fresh-faced newcomers going under the wings of seasoned and cynical professionals.

Sadly, there isn't much to get excited about in PARANOIA, a distinctly average type film. The writing is of bog-standard quality and the most interesting thing about it is the sheer number of familiar faces playing in support: Embeth Davidtz, Julian McMahon, Josh Holloway, even Richard Dreyfuss in a minor put pivotal role. Sadly they have little to do in a storyline that feels devoid of suspense and is really very ordinary.

One of the the film's biggest flaws is in the central casting of the inexperienced Liam Hemsworth. Hemsworth fails to bring any charisma to his part and in fact feels wooden throughout, and certainly out of his depth compared to the seasoned pros surrounding him. On the other hand, there's a nice turn from Gary Oldman who successfully manages to capture some of that fire he had in the 1990s. Harrison Ford looks incredibly old but is pretty good in a cast-against-type role.

This movie is not gripping {Inception}. This movie will not keep you guessing {Now You See Me}. This movie is not Oldman/Ford material and why they took the job is beyond me. If you are 25 or younger it's a great date movie (because there's time to make out as the film drags in several spots). It doesn't twist and turn and the revelations are minimal and far from making the audience gasp. Four out of ten stars may be generous. Good-looking stars and block-busting legends does not a good movie make; much less a great movie. Though I would like to get hold of that ring-tone. Character development was sloppy and dialog was quite pedantic.

What a misleading title for a movie? Nobody's even paranoid in this movie at all so calling it Paranoia doesn't really make sense to me. Instead, they could've titled it Generic Conveniences. Know why? Because everything in this movie is written in so conveniently for the characters to succeed in the most generic way. So, I guess you can tell it's not a very likable movie. Before seeing this movie, the premise sounded pretty cool. One guy is spying on a company for a rival company but not everything goes according to plan and then stuff happens. Plus, the CEOs of the companies are played by none other than two of the best actors in the business! We got Gary Oldman, one of the most diverse actors of modern cinema, and Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones & Han Solo: 'nough said). On top of that, it stars Thor's brother, Liam Hemsworth, who's good in The Expendables 2 and The Hunger Games, but this could have been his breakout role as a leading actor! Sadly, it's not.

Hemsworth's character in this movie is so unlikable; the only reason an individual would enjoy him in this movie is because he's an attractive guy. However, his acting in this movie is pretty bad. I found myself comparing him to Taylor Lautner's performance in Abduction but at least with that movie we knew it was gonna be bad. Just as bad as his acting are the choices made by his character. The whole plot is put into motion because he got fired from a company and then he decides to go out clubbing with the credit card that's issued by the company he got fired from that he still luckily has! How stupid is that! And then, through a sequence of events, they choose him of all people to be a spy; this irresponsible guy who just goes out clubbing after he's fired? Wow. The writing in this movie clearly is off-putting, but we'll get to that later. The chicks, too, that Hemsworth gets with in this movie are really weird as well. One tries playing hard to get even though he already got with her, while the other chick tries to seduce him while he's already trying to seduce her. The only semi-redeeming qualities of this movie are that Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford actually try in this movie. It's undeniable that they're phenomenal actors, and they are, for the most part, good in this movie for what they're given. Nonetheless, they're given crap dialogue and stupid plot points. I cannot bag on the writing of this movie enough; it is so bad. The dialogue is unrealistic and not enjoyable, while the plot is so convoluted and uninteresting that I kept wanting to stop watching the movie.

Additionally, the directing of this movie is a huge weakpoint. It looked like a made-for-TV movie from the '90s. The directing and camera-work were horrible. Sometimes there was a person talking but half their face was off the screen. In another sequence, Hemsworth is running like a little girl, flailing his arms around and whatnot. There's no purpose for him to be running like that; who said that was okay? It's funny seeing how stupid it is, but it's not even supposed to be funny. And with it being a spy thriller with convoluted twists, you'd think that it'd be unpredictable, right? Well it's not. It had those cliché moments like when he has to break into a vault and he's failed two out of three attempts, with the next failed attempt triggering the alarms. And then it tries to build tension in that moment, but you already know he's gonna be alright and his last attempt is gonna get through. The movie has no suspense whatsoever, despite trying to be a suspenseful summer thriller. It's not suspenseful because you always know what's gonna happen and don't really even care for the characters. It's not summer because it's boring and uninteresting rather than being fun. And it's not a thriller because there are absolutely no thrills. The only thing remotely okay about this movie are the performances of Gary Oldman and Harrision Ford, and that sometimes even gets old since Ford never gets the chance to say "Get off my plane!" It's not worth seeing in the theatre or even worth renting. It's one of those movies that will be on cable and you'll have to think about if you actually have nothing better to do than invest your time in it. But you'll probably end up passing anyways

If you watch this movie because it has Gary Oldman or Harrison Ford, you won't be alone, but you may be in for a disappointment, I'm sorry to say. Firstly they don't have much screen time and the time they do have seems to have been filmed in a hurry with little effort put into it by anyone.

The main character is that of Liam Hemsworth, who plays Adam Cassidy; the best he has going for him is that he a good looking guy. I didn't find the character very convincing, unlike the part of his dad played by Richard Dreyfuss, but his lines might as well have been written on a napkin. What a waste of talent by writer and director here.

What you might like are the fancy cars and great settings as well as the secondary roles of Kevin and Allison, played respectively by Lucas Till and Angela Sarafyan. It's all so sad that a plot, especially the ending, could have been so much more, I could see the possibilities I did not see on screen.