Steven Soderbergh's latest. He directed a script by David Koepp (Carlito's Way, Jurassic Park, Panic Room, many blockbusters).
This is not a heist but an old-fashioned spy thriller. Robotic lead Michael Fassbender pays homage to Alec Guinness's George Smiley (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). His wife Cate Blanchett is also a spy who has her eyes on (Trump-tanned) Pierce Brosnan's job. The plot is notionally about stopping the use of a Stuxnet variant, engineered by these clowns, by a Russian. The whole thing is twentieth century: the McGuffin is a physical thing but everything else is computerised, though accessing anything requires being in the right room, having the right gizmo, shagging or having other leverage over the operator. (Everyone is suitably compatible on that score.) There's an experimental AI lipreader on a dongle. Naomie Harris, the in-house industrial shrink, has some truly terrible scenes.
The chief problem, more so than the risible dialogue, tedious and sterile high-end consumption, lack of motivation, suspense and stakes, general unsexyness and so on is that the first two-thirds give you no idea whatsoever how things will be resolved. The second dinner party is so purely revelatory that you're left wanting the butler to have done it.
A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis. "It’s nonsense." Peter Bradshaw: three stars of five. Luke Goodsell.
