There are filmmakers who always deserve our attention in the new projects they face because they have earned it with the previous ones; and it doesn’t matter or we shouldn’t care if they screw it up on one occasion or more, because one can be very clear that, if they have been able to amaze us with just one of their filmic works, nothing prevents them from doing it again. Even if, in the end, they never repeat it. And that thriller of Science fiction Reminiscence be the premiere in the feature film of Lisa joy, this 2021 and with the great Hugh Jackman, what we say does not change.
Because, along with Jonathan Nolan, created such a complex and fascinating series as Westworld (since 2016), of which we look forward to its fourth season. Although the truth is that before he had also written some episodes of Raising mallow (Bryan Fuller, 2007-2009) and from Final warning (Matt Nix, 2007-2013).
The story of ‘Reminiscence’ had all the ingredients to captivate us
The first thing we must make clear is that Reminiscence It is a fairly decent debut feature, which any viewer can see without problems or regret having devoted a couple of hours of their time to the intrigue of its story. Lisa Joy, who has written her own script, has endowed it with some interesting elements with which science fiction mixes in a dystopian time, a credible social problem that reminds us of the plots of Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) or Altered Carbon (Laeta Kalogridis, 2018-2020) in a sense and, of course, classic film noir including Fatal Woman, Rebecca Ferguson’s Mae (Sleep doctor).
In addition, the American director shows that she knows film grammar very well and, thus, each of the sequences flows unhindered; without forgetting several actions with which to tense our muscles.
But nothing dazzles us. Reminiscence has everything to seduce us with its technological premise and the mystery that anguishes without possible escape its poor protagonist, Hugh Jackman’s Nick Bannister (Logan). Lisa Joy could have come up with a proposal as captivating as Origin (Christopher Nolan, 2010), the feature that, in fact, comes to mind the most with its debut on the big screen.
For the idea of fleeing from reality with fabulous devices, obsessive drama, stolen secrets, insistent liquid and certain urban images filled with dreamlike strangeness in our eyes. Yet it remains light years from that movie; and the obvious talent that he had exhibited in the pure western retrofuturist of the chapter “The Riddle of the Sphinx” (2×04) of Westworld, the only thing that he had put on behind the cameras before filming Reminiscence.
A movie about memories that will easily be forgotten
There is no doubt that the interpreters toil for maintaining the tension and fickle interest of the public, with the aforementioned Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson, who had already tested their chemistry together in The great showman (Michael Gracey, 2017) and they renew it here, at the helm.
Just like everyone else from Thandie Newton (Interview with the vampire), that comes from Westworld with Angela Sarafyan (The promise), as Emily “Watts” Sanders and Cliff Curtis (The piano) as Cyrus Boothe to Daniel Wu (Into the badlands) such as Saint Joe or Marina de Tavira (Rome), Mojean Aria (See) and Brett Cullen (Lost) embodying Tamara, Sebastian and Walter Sylvan.
But the text of Lisa Joy that guides them it only borders on true eloquence; the score of Ramin Djawadi, whose work in Game of Thrones (David Benioff and DB Weiss, 2011-2019) and in the same Westworld It is unforgettable, it enters us through one ear and escapes through the other; and in the audiovisual apparatus in full that she displays with all her good intention but not the inventiveness of which the American filmmaker is capable, staging, planning and editing, we discover a conventional set. Thus, there is the paradox that an acceptable thriller noir What Reminiscence, in which memories are one of its pillars, surely viewers will soon forget.