In the spirit of a lighter fare this Sunday.
Watching Anon (again) it is an interesting futuristic movie where there is a video recording of everything. Apparently everyone has a recording method and Clive Owen the actor, playing Sal Frieland is an investigator that needs to find a murderer. Apparently there is a hacker that goes into other peoples recording devices(in their minds – or the cloud) to kill some people. This hacker(a woman) also has NO digital record.
<<<Lots of Anon spoilers here in this post.>>>
The digital recording of this hacker is apparently so good that digital recordings of this woman are edited out of the library. As Sal sees the woman on the street, later the image is removed from the record. The main library seems to be hacked by this uberhacker. As more and more actions occur Sal notices this anomaly more frequently.
Apparently the hacker built an algorithm to erase all images and recordings of herself in all other people as they walk by and see her.
The Uberhacker also can edit real life records and add moving images (a train) into events as they happen.
To catch the hacker Sal has to try and hire her.
Sal’s colleagues perform a sting operation and are able to find all of her proxies (12 of them) to handle all of the ways she covers her tracks. The Uberhacker tries to have an anonymous life, and does not go out unless she has to.
There is a lot of sex and violence(lesbian, regular) in this movie, Shooting with a revolver point blank and the hacker does not seem to have any remorse. Also the interesting thing is the victims do not defend themselves, as they have no guns or any other weapons.
Later the commissioner is more upset of the uberhacker anonymizing rather than the murders themselves. Quote” I don’t care the victims no longer exist” I care that she doesn’t.
Another colleague:” Anonymity is the enemy”, we have to find out how she does it.
Sal has to meet her(uberhacker) and she explains that she started erasing her life at eighteen. (more sec scenes)
— Stopped midway —
First thoughts, it is an interesting Sci-fi movie with some new ways of running the future using video embedded in all people. It seems that sex and violence is too easy to insert in these movies. I wonder if there isn’t a better way to make a murder and investigation more interesting. Less blood and certainly less sex scenes might actually invoke more thoughts as to what could be happening. Anyway it starts out ok, as a murder-investigation-hacking.
why is this important? Because movies sometimes become reality, ever heard of:” Life is stranger than fiction?”
—-
The tale gets a bit strange when Sal sleeps with the uberhacker, she of course now looks closer at Sal while deleting all the just created sex scenes.
But most interesting the guy who was keeping an eye on Sal (Lester) is killed by the uberhacker.
She then records a message for Sal saying that if you try and find me I will kill you.
one of Sal’s other colleagues came in and said that Sal let her escape and kill his buddy.
“Go home” take some time off.
When Sal is in his apartment uberhacker really goes to work, after he has a short conversation with her (via text) she now proceeds to create nightmare scenes for him, starting with a guy punching him, a dog attacking, and then she does something even worse by erasing all of Sal’s memories of his son’s accident and all memories of his son.
Now things really get interesting when Sal’s building is on fire (in his head only), the uberhacker is adapt at creating new scenes in Sal’s mind.
Then she starts to add scenes where there is no traffic in a busy intersection. Which creates an accident.
Now his boss comes back to discuss the situation, and while he is in the neighborhood Sal gets arrested for shooting his neighbor and gets placed under house arrest.
Sal has to go outside and punch his overwatch agent with his eyes closed.
His boss said they will hire more hackers.
Then as Sal finds the uberhacker’s apartment she claims that she did not kill Lester.
He claims the hacker was hacked, and his boss says you can’t prove this.
That is the problem – “nothing proves anything since it can be manipulated”.
Sal is placed under double house arrest now.
She placed a loop in his eyes while creating a false officer down, allowing Sal to get back to her apartment while no one is looking and following.
Except the hacker(Cyrus) that hacked the uberhacker was there too, once a shootout happens Sal kills Cyrus.
Sal’s boss was mad that the uberhacker was released.
Uberhacker explains that she created an algorithm that creates microfractions of her life and stores it in everyone’s record. so that no one sees her.
Near the final scene uberhacker(Anon) explained this to Sal and said that the killer had to find him and her so that Sal could help her kill him. “That was close” says Sal.
What do you have to hide? Anon said nothing in particular, I just don’t want to be seen.
So this movie makes an interesting twist of a standard murder mystery which happens to show corruption in the government and police forces (a recurring theme in many movies).
While also setting up an interesting Sci-fi of the recording and hacking methods. Of course making a movie which pretends all of these things happened is easier than actually making a world that records everyone’s movements everywhere.
Thankfully we were not subjected to hours and hours of monotony in most people’s lives in this movie. Cooking and using lavatories were not important in a short movie that had to flip through the scenes quickly. Besides the storage requirements for all, and the actual privacy concerns of all seems to have been glossed over.
My most interesting point for this movie was when the bureaucrats decided it was better to control people than find out who performed blatant crimes. Also in this system they did not audit themselves, so the system was rife with corruption.
Auditing yourself may have its uses.