NIRVANA (1997)
A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003
JOHNNY MNEMONIC taught many to run for the hills whenever they hear words "cyberpunk" and "new movie" used in the same sentence. Until MATRIX it was fashionable to blame Hollywood and its usual lack of creativity for the fact that "cyberpunk" - one of the most popular phenomena of science fiction literature - never managed to transcend its popularity into the realm of movies. This inability, however, wasn't characteristic of Hollywood, and this could be seen in NIRVANA, 1997 Italian science fiction film directed by Gabriele Salvatores.
The plot takes place at Christmas 2005, in a futuristic megalopolis called "Northern Agglomerate". Jimi (played by Christopher Lambert) is successful computer game designer who discovers that his latest game "Nirvana" has been infected by mysterious virus few days before official release. As a result, Solo (played by Diego Abantuono), game's protagonist, has gained consciousness and quickly became tired of repeating same actions and same lines all over again. Solo asks his creator to erase game and Jimi agrees. He travels to the city's dark underworld to find hackers that would penetrate game company's security and help him erase the game. In the meantime, Jimi also tries to locate his missing girlfriend Lisa (played by Emmanuelle Seigner).
Like many failed "cyberpunk" movies, NIRVANA found its inspiration in works of Philip K. Dick mixed with some fashionable concepts of Oriental philosophy. Combination of futurism and noire, that had worked so well in BLADE RUNNER, is also present here and enhanced with the cast Salvatores had used with great success in MEDITERRANEO. But the suspension of disbelief necessary for viewers to accept strange futuristic world has been shattered by the bad casting - Christopher Lambert and Emmanuelle Seigner look too pretty for gritty futuristic world and their characters actually don't do much in the whole movie. The plot isn't much better, being compilation of bad 1980s and 1990s cyberpunk cliches. The only good thing about NIRVANA, apart from actors in supporting roles is production design that makes very credible and atmospheric world of future megalopolis. However, those who watch this film with a desire for good science fiction would be far from bliss.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
Review written on November 21st 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.ofcs.org - Online Films Critics Society
========== X-RAMR-ID: 36358 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1221842 X-RT-TitleID: 10003489 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 3/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews