After sitting through a movie like Paranoia, you start to wonder why movies like this are even made. Clearly not to win Oscars or make money, it seems-- This thing flopped in every conceivable definition of the word. After following that train of thought a bit, you also start to wonder how in the world Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman got involved in a thing like this, and why if the director could get two big-name actors like them, he had to settle for someone like Liam Hemsworth in the lead. In short, the pointlessness of the movie’s creation transfers over to the movie itself. This is probably one of the stupidest pieces of crap ever made, an enormous heaping of cinematic drivel that should leave film buffs angry and regular moviegoers confused.
Paranoia stars Thor’s little brother as Generic Young Twentysomething Handsome Trying-To-Make-It-Big-In-The-City Guy, who is (as his name suggests) trying to gain some traction to be successful in the corporate world. Right off the bat, this movie was destined to be awful-- It starts with a five-minute monologue from Hemsworth about life in corporate America. I don’t know if the writers thought they were exposing some revelatory truths here, but every line spoken in this movie is a cliche. “Used to be, if you did well in high school, you’d get into the right college... get a degree... blah blah blah blah blah opportunity blah blah success.” It is boring, poorly-written, incredibly bland trite, and it doesn’t help that it’s spoken by one of the least accomplished actors in all of Hollywood. No joking here, Liam Hemsworth absolutely cannot act to save his life. He is 2013’s Taylor Lautner or Sam Worthington-- an arrogant carbon-copy of every young and shitty actor ever. His delivery is consistently flat and toneless, and you don’t root for him at all through the course of the movie, because his character is such an unlikable fuckhead.
Then there’s the plot, which pits Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford against each other in a world of corporate espionage and technology. Does it sound interesting? Yes! Is it? Oh good holy Mary mother of fucking Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick no. In fact, Ford and Oldman don’t even meet face-to-face until halfway through the movie, and even then it’s a throwaway scene. So what else is the audience watching this movie for? Hemsworth? Please. Even when these two distinguished actors have screen time separately, they totally phone in their performances, not bothering to actually make the drivel they’re spouting sound good. And honestly, I can’t blame them, because that’s a nearly impossible task.
This is the first movie I’ve ever seen where every single line of dialogue spoken is either a cliche or makes no sense. Well, besides The Room. Half the time, the characters talk like robots filling up space and providing exposition when necessary. Oldman’s assistant is the most objectionable on this front, as her only purpose is to try and help the audience give a shit about the asinine plot. She does this by babbling techo mumbo-jumbo and explaining to us why the characters are the way they are. This is like having a character in Citizen Kane who turns to the audience and says “Just so you know, Rosebud is the sled. It was a symbol of Kane’s childhood that he never recovered. Therefore, he remained a broken man even though he was surrounded by all the money in the world.” Why would you have a character whose sole purpose is to describe other characters, especially when you can reveal their secrets and developments through far more intuitive ways? Aaargh... why...
Then the other half of the dialogue is taken up by the derpiest cliches of all time, none of which actually make sense within the context of the movie. In one scene, Hemsworth is confessing to a friend of his that all the horrible things happening have been his fault, and that his corporate espionage is the cause of all their troubles. He says “I’m the reason for all of this.” Then, without questioning that or asking for a further explanation, his friend says “The real question is... what are we going to do about it?” What? In what universe does this reaction make sense? This is one of many, many, MANY eye-roll-inducing scenes in this war crime of a movie. Some of the dialogue is so bad, it physically hurt me to listen to it.
I’m not going to spend any more time reviewing this shit, so Final Score for Paranoia? Yeah, you guessed it, 1/10. It doesn’t quite hit the point of no return at 0/10, mainly because it’s just aggressively bland and just passively bad. There’s no substance whatsoever here, but I honestly am way too indifferent to it to actually loathe it with a passion. Yeah, it’s bad, but it’s actually worth watching just to laugh at how much of a derp Liam Hemsworth looks like when he runs. But altogether, this is one of the worst movies of the year, not to mention one of the most boring. And that’s a deadly combination.
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