Reminiscence: A Sugarless Sci-Fi Noir
Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy makes her feature film debut with the wistfully nostalgic genre mishmash, Reminiscence. Blending elements of sci-fi, thriller, mystery, romance, and noir into a soggy pulp, the film plays with a lot of interesting, albeit unoriginal ideas, but doesn’t possess the power to fully captivate. For all its creativity, it will likely remind many viewers of better films, rather than excite them.
Nick Bannister, a private investigator of the mind, navigates the alluring world of the past when his life is changed by new client Mae. A simple case becomes an obsession after she disappears and he fights to learn the truth about her.
Reminiscence isn’t without ambition, and it probably made for a pretty good pitch; however, it never manages to be anything more than a gaggle of mushy concepts that never fully congeals. It’s essentially a pastiche of Bladerunner, Minority Report, Waterworld, and Inception with notes of old school Film Noir staples like Chinatown or The Maltese Falcon; although, on no occasion does it ever equal the sum of its parts. There’s definitely creativity sparking underneath its hood, but the wires are unmistakably crossed. It wants to have its cake and eat it too, but the cake it wants to eat was gobbled up long ago.
Although it’s set in the climate-change ravaged future, Reminiscence is fully stuck in the past. Pulling from the noir films of the 40s and 50s, writer/director Lisa Joy builds her debut from a dusty old trope: a man falls head over heels for a seductive dame only to discover that they’ve stumbled into a larger conspiracy. The man in this case is Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), and he operates a business that allows people to relive specific memories along with his friend and fellow veteran Emily "Watts" Sanders (Thandiwe Newton). The woman here is Mae, a stunning damsel in distress (played by radiant beaut Rebecca Ferguson, who throws off some serious Jessica Rabbit vibes). When Mae waltz into to Nick’s dive looking for a set of lost keys, she leaves holding his heart. The pair strike up a flickering flame of a romance that’s cut short when Mae mysteriously disappears. Unable to let go and move on with his life, Nick literally takes a trip down memory lane in an attempt to rediscover the one that got away.
There’s some clever twists along the way, but for the most part, Reminiscence squanders a lot of its potential. It’s sorely lacking in world building, exciting set pieces, and character depth. It’s all glued together with an icky voiceover (which is way to high in the mix) that’s full of cornball cliches about time and memory, and much of the time, we’re given information in Nolan-level exposition dumps. Despite all the effects of climate change that surround its setting (and hardly factor into the plot), everyone seems to be living pretty normally and unaffected. For a film that’s built entirely around memory as a concept, there’s also zero consideration for how faulty and skewed our subjective memory can be with regard to objective reality. All of the memories we witness in the film are all presented as true interpretations, which are used for clues to Mae’s disappearance, but they’re never once used as a smokescreen or as a way to throw Nick off Mae’s scent. We also have no idea of knowing how long Nick and Mae were actually together, but it feels so fleeting that it’s hard to understand why he pursues her so aggressively, other than the fact that she’s attractive, which is absolutely banal character motivation.
The dialogue is also bad and awkwardly written, which bleeds into some less-than-stellar performances. Considering the film’s cast, this is one of its biggest disappointments. The acting comes off very wooden and unnatural at times due to the clumsy dialogue. To the actors credit, they weren’t given much to work with, but it definitely feels like their hearts weren’t into this superficial imitation blockbuster. Out of the bunch, it’s Cliff Curtis that emerges as a minor standout. He’s the only one who really gives the film any zest or personality, and he gives off a faint De Niro vibe (a la Taxi Driver or Cape Fear) that lends the film a bit of much-needed spark. Joy’s direction is pretty generic and flat. There’s very little variation to how she chooses to get coverage, which makes scenes feel boring and repetitive, yet ultimately watchable. The cinematography, which is frequently muted and dull with nauseating splashes of sunshine (which is often used as a rote backlight), also doesn’t do the film many favors.
Overall, Reminiscence trite thrills to a story we’ve all seen before. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t try nearly hard enough to reach its high ambitions. Everything ultimately buckles under the weight of its poor execution, schmaltzy writing, and bland, sugarless vision that shamelessly apes other films. It’s not likely to be a film that many of us will look back on with any sense of fondness; if anything it will be something we’ll pretty easily forget. It’s probably a good thing that Warner Bros. released this one to streaming; it makes it less disappointing when you didn’t spend your hard-earned cash on this “original” misfire.
Recommendation: If you’ve got an HBO Max and are looking to burn a couple of hours with a lackluster genre hybrid, give Reminiscence a day in court.
Rating: 2 Rebecca Fergusons outta 5.
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