Paranoia
(2013)In a war between kings even a pawn can change the game.
Business espionage thriller starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman and Liam Hemsworth. Hemsworth plays an entry-level employee, determined to earn his place at the powerful corporation he works for. However, there’s a dangerous catch: he must help secure a multi-billion dollar advantage against a rival company by going undercover.... More
Adam's ruthless CEO, Nicholas (Oldman), has him spy on Jock (Ford), Nicholas' former mentor. Through doing so, Adam soon occupys the corner office and is living the life of his dreams. But behind the scenes, he is simply a pawn in Nicholas' corporate game and begins to realise that he must find a way out from under his boss who will stop at nothing, even murder, to win a multi-billion dollar advantage.Hide
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Directed by Robert Luketic
Starring Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, Amber Heard, Gary Oldman, Josh Holloway, Richard Dreyfuss, Embeth Davidtz, Lucas Till
Written by Jason Dean Hall, Barry Levy (based on the novel by Joseph Finder)
On Demand, DVD & Blu-Ray
Available from 3 providers
Flicks Review
BY Aaron Yap Flicks Writer
Occupying the same space as other laughable, misguided Hollywood attempts at “timely”, “technologically relevant” cyber-thrillers like The Net and Firewall, Robert Luketic’s Paranoia answers the question nobody was asking: what if the director of Legally Blonde remade The Conversation? Just as generic and bland as its title would imply, this unexciting corporate espionage thriller plods along with exposition-clogged, techno-babble dialogue and standard issue cloak-and-dagger reversals while taking the odd swipe at online privacy to warn us that yes, Big Brother has never stopped watching.... More
The younger, not-Thor, Hemsworth (that's Liam) is Adam Cassidy, a low-level and often shirtless tel-com drone who finds himself blackmailed by his big bad boss Nick Wyatt (Gary Oldman) to spy on their smartphone competitor/nemesis Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford). Soon Adam, who doesn’t want to wind up like his broke, emphysema-stricken dad (Richard Dreyfuss), is reaping the rewards (fast car, fancy apartment, fat paycheck, Amber Heard as his girlfriend), until Sawyer from Lost shows up to uncover the true heinous nature of Wyatt’s plans.
Much of what ensues barely qualifies as suspenseful: USB-stick data theft, thumbprint recognition mismatching, and a climactic standoff that revolves around the undeniably nail-biting sight of grown men removing batteries from their mobile phones. The veteran actors do their darnedest with the risible, strictly straight-to-vid material: Oldman gets to erupt into one of his signature screaming fits, Ford’s just going through the motions in a role that’s more or less on par with the mediocrity of his late career output.Hide
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Paranoia
BY Brendan3 superstar
Fantastic cast and good acting here.
Good twist and turn from this thriller Harrison Ford plays the evil tech baron and its taking on Garry Oldman the younger smarter tech company who's spying to Harrison Fords phone company to get a competitive advantage. Its all gets very messy and people get doubled crossed and the drama goes from there.
BY Aidan1 superstar
This was a fantastic thriller well worth going to see it at the cinemas and such a great cast Harrison Ford & Garry Oldman and Liam Hemsworth. 5 stars
The Press Reviews
4%
of critics recommend.
Rotten Tomatoes Score. More reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
The filmmakers may have hoped to make a timely commentary on the amorality in our executive suites, but they end up merely restating the obvious. Maybe the whole thing would have played better as a corporate comedy, the kind that Doris Day and Rock Hudson made some 50 years ago. Full Review
Mr. Oldman and Mr. Ford are the only actors in the film, directed by Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”), skillful enough to navigate the yards of jargon-packed boilerplate in Jason Hall and Barry L. Levy’s thudding screenplay. Full Review
The fact that Hemsworth is severely lacking in leading-man charisma also doesn’t help the pervasive overall incompetence of the film, which fixates on the perils and panic of our modern surveillance culture while itself proving to be borderline unwatchable. Full Review
Ford and Oldman’s scenes together are Paranoia’s sole redeeming facet. Full Review
Has a host of problems, but the biggest seems to be that no one in it is nearly paranoid enough. Full Review
Liam Hemsworth does have a charismatic presence on screen. It's slickly directed by Robert Luketic even though it's all pretty unbelievable. But in fact I rather enjoyed it. Full Review
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