Night at the Movies: Citizen Zero

[Scrivener]

Thank God this one was free. I just attended a free preview screening of Citizen Zero. It wasn't really a bad movie, per se, but if you've seen even one of the commercials for this film then you should have the entire movie figured out before you even step into the theatre. It's not suspenseful, scary, disturbing or even uncomfortable.

Also, I can't for the life of me figure out why this got an R rating! There's not much gore (I've seen far worse on the X-Files), not really any swearing that I can remember. It's about as bad as an episode of CSI.

Yeah... like I said, there's not really much plot to develop, no new bits of information to discover, and no suspense or drama or... anything. The story is so obvious that the TV spots are sloppily and deliberately designed mislead people into a plot element that the film totally fodges on it's own. It just dosn't work.

You will never care about a single character. You will never buy into the weak 'uncertainty' setup they try to build. There is never a sense of urgency or necessity or drama. Not that you ever feel like anyone is in danger anyway.

SPOILERS (Not that it matters if you've seene even one commercial):

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The one thing that might have made this film remotely interesting is if you didn't know if the killer is actually Ben Kingsley's Orion or if it's this other guy, this Citizen Zero, he talks about. While some of the characters firmly believe that Orion is the killer (and the director wants you to think so too), the film unravels in such an amateurish and sloppy way that you simply never buy into it. By paying attention the first 5 minutes of the film you should know exactly what is going on, even if you havn't seen one of the god-aweful TV spots.

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END SPOILERS

Don't waste your money. This is cable TV material. As talented as Ben Kingsley is, his skills are totally wasted in this boring, predictable, plodding, soulless smuck of a film.

It's like The Ring meets Identity, but less interesting and even more predictable. If you're one of those people who just loved those movies, then you might be ok with this one. Still, if you have $10 to burn and haven't seen Collateral yet, go see that one instead.

Score: 5/10

[Supreme Cmdr]

I saw this yesterday right after Hero. If you like a good formulaic thriller and you like Ben Kingsley, go see it. I liked it a lot.

Oh, just ignore everything Scriv wrote.

9/10

[Scrivener]

quote:

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Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

If you like a good formulaic thriller and you like Ben Kingsley, go see it.

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Formulaic bad. Ben Kingsley good. But by now you all know that I hate just about everything.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Yeah, it was formulaic (but aren't most films nowadays?), but that didn't stop me from enjoying it.