MOVIE REVIEW - Paranoia

Sometimes you see a movie and you have to ask, "why?"  Why make this movie?  Who in the studio chain thought this script has a chance to be something good, or a hit.  

Time will tell is this is a hit or not, but Paranoia is so amazingly average you'll remember this for literally minutes to come.  If that long.

This movie at its heart is maybe the most stereotypically insulting movie you will see in a long time.  In short, every group that can be insulted is. Middle aged men, young men, and especially young women.  Toss in a story that is ridiculously average, and a script that looks like someone's first time and you have this mess.  Plus, I am still struggling to know who is this movie is actually for?  Who is the target audience?  Seems it has none.

Liam Hemsworth stars as Adam.  He is a 27 year old computer tech executive on the way up at a fictional tech giant company, called Wyatt.  He and his amazing arrogance gets himself and his entire team made up of young exec's fired during a presentation the company owner Nick (Gary Oldman).  So Adam does the next logical thing. He takes himself and his entire fired team out on the town on a yet to be stopped Wyatt credit card and rings up a $16,000 bar tab in one night.   So, Wyatt then finds him and bribes him to be a corporate mole to be hired by the competition, run by Jock, (Harrison Ford), who was once in business with Nick. Adam had no choice, he may be killed.

So Adam gets hired and starts doing everything he has to do to steal every bit of info he can.  He lies, cheats, and even sleeps with a high ranking marketing woman, Emma  (Amber Heard).   Will he get caught?  Well, of course he will.  And will he be double crossed?  Well, of course he will.  But, will everything work out in the end?  Of course ...yet again.

This movie spends little time in developing any real characters.  All are basically shallow and thin.  Hemsworth spends the majority of this movie looking more like a magazine model than a star.  Ford and Oldman are fine, but the writing is horrible and virtually anyone could have played these roles.  Plus, it only spends about 5 minutes making you feel paranoid as it advertises.  Think they forgot that was the whole premise. 

The character of Emma should be concerning to many, and insulting to every women on earth. Emma is an Ivy League graduate from Yale. She is lied to, slept with, used, and is told every huge lie that a guy could do wrong to her personally and as a pro.  And she loses everything she ever had.  But in he end, all that matters is "love."  As she ends up working for Adam in his start up company.  (Yeah I'll spoil it because you see it coming and won't care).   And she falls back in love with him.  How amazingly insulting to every young woman on earth.

This movie looks like 1,000 other movies made like this, only this one is worse.  No need to see it in theaters, or as a rental in 90 days.  A weak leading man, an insulting script and a story that is beyond oridinary.

Paranoia.  NOT good.