AnonNo matter how sophisticated law enforcement techniques become or its resources grow, crime flourishes when criminals can exploit those techniques and resources better than the law. Anon is a sci-fi procedural thriller about a future where society is interconnected on a totally transparent level through a wireless network called "The Ether". Police detectives like Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) generally solve crimes by reviewing archival footage taken from the point-of-view of the perpetrators, whose own eyes literally betray them. After Sal is assigned to a case where the memories of the murder victim have been scrubbed to conceal the identity of the killer, he becomes tangled up in a web of conspiracy and deception, where his own senses are turned against him.
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While a detective story at its core, Anon relies on the audience's anxiety about virtual networks and the vulnerability it suggests to heighten the tension. A killer that can not only commit murder with impunity by manipulating the evidence of his/her killings combined with a police force that is no longer equipped to solve crime the "old-fashioned" way is a terrifying premise. Anon depicts a world that operates almost exclusively on "augmented reality", and takes the paranoid fear of having one's private life archived and accessible to all to the nth degree. The film avoids explaining how the constant flood of interconnected information--referred to as the "Mind's Eye"--works for each person, except that it is contingent on their individual perception of the world around them. Society in Anon has come to accept that what is seen is the truth--any threat to this is perceived as even more of a threat than a rampant serial killer. Anon shares similarities with Minority Report, another science fiction mystery set in a near future. A police force that can not only solve crime but (in theory) deter it since criminals reveal themselves through their own point-of-view seems foolproof. But like Minority Report, the success of a crime-free society hinges on a technology that is imperfect, easily subverted by criminals that are more clever than the police. The world of Anon is predicated on the idea that all people are connected to The Ether, yet there exists a few individuals who operate outside of this expanse, performing illicit work for those willing to delve into the "Dark Ether" and pay with hard cash. Sal suspects that a woman without a traceable identity that he passes on the street one day--credited as "The Girl" (Amanda Seyfried)--is a link into a mysterious underground conspiracy that he hopes can guide him to the killer. He and his fellow detectives attempt to lure The Girl with a job, staging an elaborate ruse through an artificial identity and pretense to remove some memory from this fabricated past. The Girl proves to be a cagey and careful target; after she catches wind of Sal's trap, she takes flight and appears to unleash a barrage of psychological and hallucinatory tortures upon Sal in retaliation. Sal's mission to capture the killer goes from merely professional to personal, as he tries to protect not just his life, but his archived memories as well, including the last vestiges of his late son.
Anon uses several flourishes to emphasize that it is less about a sleek future with a technologically-sophisticated "uber-internet" than the actualization of a "Big Brother" dystopia where crime prevention and social networking has run amok. Consider how the film is shown in two alternating aspect ratios; the movie is in "fullscreen" when depicting a character's point of view, and letterboxed otherwise. The constant shift between these two visual languages implies a society so inundated with rapid influxes of data, that it's become borderline schizophrenic, creating a schism between reality and what is merely perceived to be reality. The world of Anon is washed out and faded, as though overexposure to all of this data has literally taken the color out of life. Even the musical score is sedate and electronic, intentionally sterile and inhuman, befitting a world whose residents behave more like computers than human beings. The overwhelming amount of augmented reality overlaying the world is filled with product placements and analyses of other people via a heads-up display. A predominance of first person points of view (often from Sal's perspective, with his pistol trained in front of him) further suggests that this world has more in common with a video game than reality--one that can be "hacked" by anyone determined enough to pull back the curtain on this illusory world. The Girl haunts Sal's thoughts because of her beauty, but also because of what she represents. Sal believes that transparency leads to a safer world, and that the only people who avoid it must have something to hide. The Girl counters this argument by claiming that she doesn't have something to hide, but cherishes her privacy because it is her right. She eventually shares her "record"--an archive of her memories before she literally went off the grid--and recalls that it required that she delete everything, an act she describes as liberating. She operates by a code of honor, even when Sal is deceiving her with his artificial identity; until he compromises her trust, she treats him to the same level of privacy as she would expect. The Girl's willingness to respect Sal's privacy seems unthinkable in his society--a revolutionary concept revealing a world that appears superficially safe, but is fundamentally a totalitarian regime--one step away from Orwellian "thought crime".
Recommended for: Fans of a sci-fi detective story that merges tropes from procedural thrillers with a paranoia dystopian future devoid of privacy. Anon resembles the kind of direct-to-video sci-fi movies from the Eighties that combined a high-concept plot with a healthy dose of sex, violence, and future tech peppered throughout.
Anon uses several flourishes to emphasize that it is less about a sleek future with a technologically-sophisticated "uber-internet" than the actualization of a "Big Brother" dystopia where crime prevention and social networking has run amok. Consider how the film is shown in two alternating aspect ratios; the movie is in "fullscreen" when depicting a character's point of view, and letterboxed otherwise. The constant shift between these two visual languages implies a society so inundated with rapid influxes of data, that it's become borderline schizophrenic, creating a schism between reality and what is merely perceived to be reality. The world of Anon is washed out and faded, as though overexposure to all of this data has literally taken the color out of life. Even the musical score is sedate and electronic, intentionally sterile and inhuman, befitting a world whose residents behave more like computers than human beings. The overwhelming amount of augmented reality overlaying the world is filled with product placements and analyses of other people via a heads-up display. A predominance of first person points of view (often from Sal's perspective, with his pistol trained in front of him) further suggests that this world has more in common with a video game than reality--one that can be "hacked" by anyone determined enough to pull back the curtain on this illusory world. The Girl haunts Sal's thoughts because of her beauty, but also because of what she represents. Sal believes that transparency leads to a safer world, and that the only people who avoid it must have something to hide. The Girl counters this argument by claiming that she doesn't have something to hide, but cherishes her privacy because it is her right. She eventually shares her "record"--an archive of her memories before she literally went off the grid--and recalls that it required that she delete everything, an act she describes as liberating. She operates by a code of honor, even when Sal is deceiving her with his artificial identity; until he compromises her trust, she treats him to the same level of privacy as she would expect. The Girl's willingness to respect Sal's privacy seems unthinkable in his society--a revolutionary concept revealing a world that appears superficially safe, but is fundamentally a totalitarian regime--one step away from Orwellian "thought crime".
Recommended for: Fans of a sci-fi detective story that merges tropes from procedural thrillers with a paranoia dystopian future devoid of privacy. Anon resembles the kind of direct-to-video sci-fi movies from the Eighties that combined a high-concept plot with a healthy dose of sex, violence, and future tech peppered throughout.