PLOT: In the future, technology allows users to relive memories as a way to escape the grimness of a mostly-flooded world. A private investigator (Hugh Jackman) who specializes in this technology falls in love with a mysterious woman (Rebecca Ferguson). When she vanishes, he uses his memories to find her, only to discover that she has deadly secrets of her own that could get him killed.
REVIEW: It’s hard to fathom where a movie like Reminiscence went so wrong. The brainchild of writer-director-producer Lisa Joy, one of the people behind HBO’s Westworld, this should have been a slam-dunk. After all, it’s a futuristic Neo-noir starring Hugh Jackman! Suffice to say, Reminiscence goes badly awry right from the start, adding up to a convoluted, dull genre mash-up that’s highly unoriginal.
One movie I couldn’t get out of my head throughout was Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, which this movie copies so closely it almost feels like a (bad) remake. In that movie, Ralph Fiennes played a guy selling memories, who pined over his nightclub singing ex, while assisted by a bad-ass ex-military vet (Angela Bassett) who secretly adored him. Reminiscence has a nearly identical plot, in that Jackman pines over a nightclub chanteuse (Rebecca Ferguson) while being protected by his gun-wielding ex-military partner (Thandiwe Newton) who, you guessed it – secretly adores him. That’s how original this is.
Jackman is an ill fit as the noirish hero. We’re supposed to believe that he’s madly in love with Ferguson and that the two had red hot sexual chemistry, but the film utterly fails to build up any chemistry between the two whatsoever. Jackman cannot evoke the obsessiveness of someone like Michael Douglas, who might have been able to make a movie like this work twenty or so years ago. Jackman and Ferguson (who seems way too sophisticated and reserved to play a femme fatale) are miscast.
The film also awkwardly tries to shoehorn in some action, perhaps in a bid to appeal to Jackman’s fanbase. Unfortunately, while essentially a mystery, the movie dips its toe into the other genre during a wildly over-the-top gunfight peppered with silly slo-mo and a foot-chase/fight sequence that seems cribbed from another movie. Oh well, at least these moments liven up what’s otherwise a deadly dull piece of work.
Part of me wonders whether post-production tinkering might be the culprit here, with the film having a suspicious amount of voice-over narration and exposition data dumps. It wouldn’t surprise me if the film’s first cut is significantly different from what we see here, but even still, I doubt there’s a classic director’s cut sitting on a shelf somewhere. Jackman seems ill at ease in a part that doesn’t suit him. Newton tries to inject some life into the movie but also seems too fresh-faced to be playing a character that we’re told over and over again is an alcoholic war vet known for her high body count. Actors like Daniel Wu and Cliff Curtis pop in and out of the film in wildly over-the-top character parts, while some dialogue is corny beyond belief.
Suffice to say; this is a disastrous star vehicle for Jackman and big-screen debut for Joy. There is a silver lining, though. Hopefully, with it getting a simultaneous HBO Max release, the film will come and go from theaters without much of a peep and be quickly forgotten. Some technical credits are solid, such as the VFX that convey a half-flooded, futuristic Miami or DP Paul Cameron’s cinematography, but this is a noir tribute that fails on every level imaginable. It’s one of the worst studio films I’ve seen in a long time.
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