This fourth of July I did something that is becoming a mainstream American activity: I gave the Music Box Theatre $10 to watch something a Korean director (Bong Joon-ho) made (with a large CGI budget) that seems beyond Hollywood's grasp. Some fabulous performances here: Chris Evans (Captain America?!?) channels Ben Affleck, Tilda Swinton has a ball, and Ewen Bremner is at his best since Trainspotting, sporting a Jewfro and losing an arm in the process. Ed Harris does his best in the Matrix-Architect role. As always there are some graphic blood sprays and extended rave-style violence. Somehow this got funded/made by the Czechs. I can imagine the pitch to Park Chan-wook: say we took that corridor scene from Oldboy and made a whole movie out of it...
Surprising to me the audience was the largest I've seen yet in the main theatre, and most people sit a long way back. Thinking about it some more, it also evokes the train-future of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046.
A. O. Scott got right into it. J. Hoberman at the New York Review of Books.
Wondering what Egan is up to now led me to borrowing this from the Chicago Public Library. Part of me can admire his fiercely ambitious imaginary physics, though my eyes glaze over pretty much as they did back in first year. The plot is fairly humdrum otherwise, and there is a lot derived from earlier scifi classics that maybe the younguns no longer read. I won't be chasing up the two successors.
