Director: John Moore
Year: 2016
Rated NR
Rating: * * * Stars
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel
I've seen Unlawful Entry. I've seen 1996's Fear. I.T. (my latest review) feels similar and in terms of being a guilty pleasure, I sort of liked it. Pierce Brosnan plays the protagonist for a change. He grits his teeth and rages. Based on his recent run of glitzy projects, Brosnan senses the need to be executive producer here as well. In other casting news, James Frecheville portrays I.T.'s twenty-something antagonist. He's real nasty and out of control.
Now I.T. doesn't have an MPAA rating but I'll saddle it with a formidable R. It's shoddily violent with a few F words and a masturbation scene. As far as Internet releases go, this ode to gloss, sheen, and deadly hard drives, is formidably above the Mendoza line.
Anyway, I.T. gets the reward for being the slickest, most techy thriller I've viewed in many a moon. It's about an aviation tycoon developing an Uber-like app, an app made to get people in a plane to fly cross country. In regards to I.T.'s look, well it's so sterile and pristine, you could literally lick the surface off of any screen it's playing on.
Slickness and high-tech proficiency aside, I.T. doesn't feel like present day. It appears as if it takes place in the future (maybe twenty years ahead). The moral of its story is that you should never mess with a computer genius who works for you and wants to take out your underage daughter. He might be a sociopath, a hacker, or a lonely screw head. And if you rub him the wrong way, he may be bent on ruining your life.
With I.T., there are sleek automobiles, a reincarnation of the song "Words" by Missing Persons, an environment mostly populated by the upper class, and Pierce using an Irish accent this time around. It makes sense. This dude is in fact, Irish. Also, I.T. contains a Baltimore, Md setting, co-stars that resemble notables (Brosnan's daughter and wife characters look like a young Ginnifer Goodwin and Annette Bening respectively), and a director who gets a bounce back period from dreck like A Good Day to Die Hard and Max Payne (that would be Ireland's own John Moore).
All in all, I.T. is far from epic. It produces an ending that is rote and variably abrupt. However, this flick is willful and tightly edited in a way that could satisfy any audience member looking for a rental time killer. My rating: 3 stars.
Written by Jesse Burleson
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