Reviews

The way the movie is presented might look old today. CRT displays, repetitive synth music etc. However its story surprisingly covers a part of todays topics when it comes to data privacy and confidence in computers. Remember, in the 80s, computers just were for nerds. Also centrally stored data was a rare thing and didn't even have the attention of the people back then.

Today it is normal that we have "cloud data", that people who ware working with the data trust in this data. Also people are trusting their "self driving" car. A main difference to the movie is that it is not the state, it is the companies who are in possession of the big data and who are trying to get conclusions out of this.

Still the movie does a great job, showing the absurdity of exaggerated devoutness to machine data. If you regard the time when the movie was done and how unimportant computers were back then in the daily life, the movie does a great job and is worth being seen. When it came out even some German IT union claimed that they want to have a counterstatement by the public broadcasting company who showed this movie.

This movie has some good ideas and excellent scenes. However, they don't make a movie and especially no overlenght movie.

I have no problems with stories that are told in a slow way. However here it feels that some ideas just were cobbled together and some parts of the movie are obsolete for the whole story. It feels like the story writers ran out of ideas but still wanted to make an overlenght movie and so tried to find material to make the movie longer.

Maybe there this movie is good enough for some entertaining youtube clips in the future. It's enough if you see them, because if you stop watching after the boring beginng you also don't miss much except for a short part.

After wondering why reviews for this movie are quite polarizing, it became clear after watching the movie and reading about the history it is based on.

The movie does work well as a fictional story, if you don't care about the history. It is well done, has a catchy story, and an interesting way how it is told. Unless you don't just watch Hollywood action blockbusters you might be fine with this movie.

But the problem starts, when you take a look at the history. The story behind this movie is not suitable for a fairy-tale where main characters are enjoying their role. No wonder people will find this irreverent. The movie itself does refer to the story it is based on, it also provides footage of the original propaganda film - and that does not match to the way the story is told.

Other things that might be irritating is that main characters are speaking English and that Romania is too colorful for that time. No problem if you get a dubbed version of the movie, no problem if you see it as a fictional story. But the movie itself makes the connection to the historical background - and that's where it doesn't work.

I was a little bit disappointed when I saw this film. It could be a great movie if just the political side blows worked out. But when they refer to political habits then things are too sketchy and simple. I mean you could make a great film where crooks use political knowledge to take benefit from playing people against each other, but it doesn't works like in this film.

I also agree that it takes this movie to move on. While it is good in some movies to have long scenes, here it just doesn't make sense and makes the movie a little bit boring.

So my summary is: The film and the idea could have potential, but the way the film is trying to refer to political stuff just doesn't work out here. But this also is not a bad movie, it's better than most things on TV just don't expect anything big.