Anon Movie Review

Anon (2018)

Watch Anon on Netflix
Written by: Andrew Niccol
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried, Colm Feore, Mark O'Brien, Sonya Walger
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer

Plot
In a world without anonymity or crime, a detective meets a woman who threatens their security.

Verdict
It's a film noir detective story blended with sci-fi elements and a police state with no privacy. The world is a neat idea, but it's supported by a story that forces a few twists to make the plot interesting without fully developing the side plots. I'm left wondering why with no clear indication other than it's a plot contrivance to prop up the narrative.
It depends.

Review
My favorite Andrew Niccol film is Gattaca (1997), though he also wrote The Truman Show (1998).

This is a world where everything is connected. You see everyone's name above their head in your field vision as you walk down the street with an information feed connected to your vision. Information is overwhelming with ads everywhere and even the song playing from a passing car revealed. It's pervasive, all this information. The police don't need to investigate as they have access to people's visual feeds and their entire timeline. Anytime a story features extensive recording, I go back to Black Mirror's The Entire History of You. That did a great job of capturing that idea and exploring the inherent pitfalls. This movie could have taken more notes.

The standards are challenged when Sal (Clive Owen) gets a case where the killer is able to hide, obscuring their information and visual record. The question is how can anyone do that. Second, what are detectives supposed to do when the answers aren't readily available?

Clive Owen plays Sal Frieland 

To give Sal some depth, he gets a painful past. He lost a child somehow and beocming estranged from his wife. We're left to assume the loss was too great for their relationship. 

Sal thinks it may be related to a woman he saw earlier. No information appeared above her head. He assumed it was just an anomaly, but it seems some people can hide despite the extensiveness of this system. The police realize this isn't the first kill like this where the victim is fed the killers feed to obscure any identification.

The victims all hired a hacker to clean up their video feeds, wanting to erase and embarrassment or mistake. This hacker can manipulate images in real time as well. While chasing a suspect Sal has flushed out, he trips on a landing that isn't there and sees a train that's not there as he nearly falls onto the tracks. Sal goes undercover to lure out the hacker that can manipulate images.

Amanda Seyfried plays Anon

This is a world where there's no privacy. Frequent camera angles mimic surveillance cameras mounted high. It's 'big brother' watching everything you do. The police can access anything and everything. With that kind of access and information, of course hackers want to get in. I don't know why people accept this, where's the upside?

Sal contacts Anon (Amanda Seyfried). She's cautious, hiding from Sal and having some fun with her ability to spy on him. Sal's assumed identity certainly generates questions. The problem with that is that I'd think a hacker could go back farther than a month to unravel his cover story. Her job should be predicated on an abundance of caution. It's a plot contrivance that Anon isn't more suspicious of him. She checks out his information only after they meet in person, but there's no way she wouldn't have done that prior. Sal continues to contact her which should tip her off, but it doesn't. When Anon finally figures out he's a cop, I don't know why she let him live other than for the sake of the movie's plot. She instead torments him with his own memories.

It's all a big cover up but this isn't a satisfying conclusion. Anon's plight wasn't as straightforward as it first seemed, though that's not a big surprise. She was dealing with her own hacker stalker. We're left with a big why as the real reason is that the answers we're given only serve the plot in making this a deceptive crime thriller. It's a neat idea with an extreme police state and how crimes are solved, but the world isn't fully developed.

Title Card