RECALL FLATLINES
It’s mighty tempting to dwell in the past when there’s nothing much to look forward to. Jaded private investigator Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) pays the rent by enabling his clients to relive moments that actually meant something to them in this apocalyptic sci-fi thriller.
He is just about to shut the lid on his coffinsized flotation device, initially developed to interrogate enemy soldiers, when a sultry femme fatale materialises in his doorway late one night.
Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) has a rather unusual request.
She needs his services to help her find a lost set of keys.
Bannister is instantly smitten with the breathless lounge singer, much to the chagrin of his loyal, hardbitten offsider, Watts (Thandiwe Newton, rock solid).
Watts’s instinctive mistrust of this woman-ina-red-dress is not ill-founded.
There’s something “off’ about Mae – above and beyond her aversion to locksmiths.
But Bannister’s attraction is so powerful, he ignores all the warning signs – leaping feet-first into a full-blown love affair.
When Mae disappears, abruptly and without warning, Bannister refuses to give up on her.
He spends hour-upon-hour in the flotation tank, revisiting old memories in the hope of uncovering new information.
Ostensibly, Bannister is trying to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. But this is more obsession than investigation.
Bannister gets a much-needed break when a detective employs him to interrogate a comatose gangster.
Mae’s unexpected appearance in the police suspect’s memory casts her in a whole new light.
Determined to find out what really happened, Bannister risks mental burnout as well as a more conventional death by gunshot as he blunders through an almost-underwater underworld of criminals and bent coppers.
In this version of the near-future, Miami is sinking fast.
Only the rich live on dry land – at the expense of low-lying badlands to which they divert their run-off.
Reminiscence’s watery, light-refracting backdrop makes the familiar seem strange and Jackman delivers a workman-like performance as Bannister.
But Ferguson, who made such a big impression in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation and Fallout, has either been miscast or misdirected here.
Mae is strangely two-dimensional. She feels more like a cipher than a character.
Compounding the film’s problems is the action choreography, which is unusually sluggish and unconvincing.
There are reminiscences and then there’s deja vu. This Noirish journey through other people’s memories recalls of a slew of other sci-fi thrillers – all of them superior.
The filmmakers might be aiming for hardboiled, but this egg is undercooked.
In cinemas now