IMDB says this was Riz Ahmed's only feature for 2024. Written by Justin Piasecki. Directed by David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water (2016)).
A high-concept, deep-throat adjacent thriller (vale Robert Redford) that begins with Ahmed somewhat mysteriously monitoring the passing of documents from a worker bee to a corporate suit in a generic NYC restaurant. Soon enough we meet Lily James (Baby Driver (2017)) who is trying to evade responsibility for some seriously under-researched/written/baked agricultural blah blah. A romantic arc inevitably ensues but proves insufficient distraction from the flaws in this take on the mechanics of whistleblowing. It's just not clever enough, and the movie loses its shape well before we get to the pointy end.
Ahmed doesn't talk much; he's far more inert than in Sound of Metal (2019) which is not to say he's bad as it's a coiled-tension sort of inertia. Homage is paid to that movie in the titular TTY relay service and a beaut (but too brief) scene where he shares a laugh with a deaf identity forger, and also to The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) in the bio he provides to his Alcoholics Anonymous group. He presents as wooden and earnest, more on the spectrum than addicted, but I guess the former does not entail falling off the wagon.
Sam Worthington does OK as muscle. He looks so much older now.
The whistleblowing aspect reminded me a bit of Rusty Crowe's tobacco movie with Michael Mann, The Insider (1999), perhaps because so much of this is anachronistic analog in a digital world. Similarly it is not an obvious platform for action, and those parts felt as bolted on as in Hugh Jackman's misfire Swordfish (2001).
Manohla Dargis. Lily James was miscast! They should have asked for more from Worthington. Benjamin Lee saw it at TIFF. The Conversation (1974), Blow Out (1981). James was ineffective at charming us. He reckoned things go downhill after the concert on Broadway but that's leaving it a bit late. At Roger Ebert's venue: Peter Sobczynski from Tribeca, briefly, and Matt Zoller Seitz at length (two-and-a-half stars), Three Days of the Condor (1975). The latter observes that everything is too cynical now for whistleblowing to work as it once sorta maybe did, but he misses the trick of this movie: the SEC still has some very sharp teeth. It seems I am susceptible to a good paranoid thriller.
