The Anomaly (2014) Noel Clarke, Ian Somerhalder, Brian Cox, Alexis Knapp, Luke Hemsworth Movie Review

The Anomaly (2014)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Noel Clarke in The Anomaly (2014)

The Ryan Familiarity

Former soldier Ryan (Noel Clarke) wakes up in the back of a security vehicle in darkness, as he looks around he finds a boy chained up with his head covered. Helping him to escape Ryan has no idea how he got there or what he has been up to. The next thing he knows he has blacked out and is in some sort of library days later, again having no idea how he got there or what has been going on. Every time this happens he pieces together a little more of what is happening, realising that he has less than 10 minutes each time before he blacks out and wakes up an undefined period of time later. Eventually he meets Dana (Alexis Knapp), teaming up despite knowing little about her to get to the bottom of what is happening which seems to revolve around Harkin Langham (Ian Somerhalder).

So Jason Bourne had amnesia and was trying to piece together who he was, he ended up involved with a woman whilst he had a government agency after him. Ryan comes to with sort of amnesia, ends up hooking up with a girl and has some sort of agency after him. Those are not the only similarities as both Bourne and Ryan seem to be trained in hand to hand combat. But one big difference is that Ryan gets 10 minutes of life at a time before he blacks out and it all starts again.

The trouble with "The Anomaly" is that whilst the whole idea of 10 minutes at a time combined with a futuristic landscape is clever it is of course all a little too similar to the "Bourne Identity" and as this clearly was not made on the same sort of budget it comes across as weaker. This is most certainly the case when it comes to the action which is constantly shown in slow motion which makes it all look unnaturally staged.

The thing about "The Anomaly" is that what should drive the movie is the mystery of what is going on when it comes to Ryan but due to each 10 minutes ending up in action it ends up more confusing than mysterious. Eventually it does start to come together and we get a picture forming which has some twists to it but it gets incredibly messy on the way to making sense.

What this all boils down to is that "The Anomaly" probably had some good ideas on paper but the final product probably doesn't do the ideas justice and ends up at times feeling like it wants to be a futuristic Jason Bourne clone.


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