It is a science fiction movie, based on a Philip K. Dick short story so I had to see it, right? Sure, but nobody said that I have to like the movie, so I didn’t. The worst part was that after 10 minutes I realized that a few months ago I read the short story the movie is based on. From then on I had a vague feeling lingering that the story was much better, than the movie. Sure, the events lined up the same way, although I don’t recall any romantic thread in the original one. It was action packed as one would expect from John Woo. The cliches were all there too, down to the seedy hotel rooms, sexy and smart blond sidekick, a bit dumb but sympathetic FBI agents, the overuse of blue lights and backgrounds, technological marvels (that don’t look so far-fetched any more), evil corporate boss and so on.
I wasn’t exactly bored with it, but would have preferred more emphasis on what our heroes learn and act upon: Looking into the future is bad for you and for everyone else. I am no scientist and have no idea whether looking into the future technically will ever be possible. But this moral has been handed down from Abrahamic religion and I strongly agree with it. The future should left to its own devices. More precisely we should make the best possible version of it without trying to get a shortcut to it by peeking. This is what the protagonist did through a research project. Once done his memory of the work was erased, but apparently before that he decided to change the future (for the better) by destroying the look-into-the-future-machine he developed. So he is playing ‘god’ so nobody else would play god later on. Nice paradox. The movie returns to a punchline twice according to which saving the world equals changing it. I don’t think it does. We all keep changing it with our day-to-day activities. Hopefully we, altogether can save it from ourselves humans. But it is not guaranteed that the continuous change will bring safety.