As for the plot, when we spoke with Mann earlier this year, he was careful about revealing too much, but did share the scope of the project. “With great facility the people in the film move between Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Chicago. And the film’s story takes you from those places to inside a processor, inside the electron universe, amongst a population of transistors," he explained. "You have two billion transistors in your cell phone. Bits with either an absence or surplus of electrons, then become ones or zeroes, every two billionth of a second and affect the macro, our lives. That's the world this film takes place in.”
Okay, that's a bit abstract, but the more official logline for the movie starring Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei and Wang Leehom spells out the plot as following a furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta. As for the title, a tweet by Holt McCannally, who is also in the film, suggests it's now called "Black Hat" which would make a lot of sense.
First Images From Michael Mann's Cyber Thriller Starring Chris Hemsworth|The Playlist
I'm just excited for a new Michael Mann movie, honestly.
Speaking with EW, Miller provided a tantalizing setup for the film:
“I wanted to tell a linear story–a chase that starts as the movie begins and continues for 110 minutes.”
Read more at Mad Max: Fury Road Image with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron
Featuring a pretty terrific ensemble, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright and Daniel Br?hl, and based on the novel by espionage thriller master John Le Carr?, the film follows a German spy tracking a half-Muslim, half-Russian immigrant who may or may not be a terrorist. But before bringing in the target, he wants to know if there's more information that could be uncovered by this individual.
The Raid 2 is bigger and longer, but not necessarily better, than the original. It's a fine film, featuring flawless Action execution and delivering some detailed, but not really hefty, dramatic and character currents amongst the bloodshed. Fans of the original will probably be pleased, even considering this film's overall larger structure. The action is just as, if not more so, intense, and the film sufficiently pushes its protagonist further along in his career. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Raid 2 delivers high end video and audio. The package includes a nice assortment of extra goodies. This is not for the weak-hearted but it definitely comes recommended to fans of the first and aficionados of bloody film action.
“Lucy” is really something of a stunt, an excuse for a character to develop a higher power for genre purposes. Any time a character has to address the philosophical ideas in the plot, the picture stalls: Besson is clearly more at home with his visual wit, like a strikingly realistic car chase that defies every law of safety. Lucy's brain capacity keeps popping up onscreen in big numbers—20%, 40%—building to that climax. And when it arrives, it's complete Looney Tunes, a whirling fantasia of effects and images that begins to bend the fabric of space and time as even Morgan Freeman looks on, flummoxed. It's almost as if Lucy herself is trying to escape her own movie. It's as if Besson himself knows that he, like other filmmakers, are better than this, better than the CGI orgy, better than the endless brawls, better than the tacky genre-defining one-on-one confrontations. You dumb humans and your popguns. [B+]
Synopsis: NIGHTCRAWLER is a pulse-pounding thriller set in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Finding a group of freelance camera crews who film crashes, fires, murder and other mayhem, Lou muscles into the cut-throat, dangerous realm of nightcrawling -- where each police siren wail equals a possible windfall and victims are converted into dollars and cents. Aided by Rene Russo as Nina, a veteran of the blood-sport that is local TV news, Lou thrives. In the breakneck, ceaseless search for footage, he becomes the star of his own story.
"Nightcrawler" co-stars Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed and lands in theaters October 17. The movie will make its world premiere at TIFF this September.
Since the expectation has increasingly become that stories on the big-screen have to be big, it’s interesting to ponder where that leaves a film like this “A Most Wanted Man.” Like all of Corbijn’s work, it is incredibly handsomely produced—the cinematography by Benoit Delhomme (“Lawless,” “The Proposition”) is typically gorgeous—and it has the feel of a tense and moody European caper, but the whole thing feels a bit slight. Not as arty as “The American” or “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” or as soapy and quickly paced as its small screen counterparts, “A Most Wanted Man” is left somewhere in the middle. The finale stings admirably but you can’t help but wonder what happens next week. [B-]