Cypher

William Gibson has long been regarded as one of the finest living writers of modern science fiction. His novel Neuromancer (1984) is credited with predicting the internet and coined the term ‘Cyberspace’. Despite two notable failures based on his short stories his novels have not made it to the big screen. Johnny Mnemonic (1995) was turned into a pedestrian action flick by the studio and New Rose Hotel (1998) directed by Abel Ferrara is so bad that its never been officially released in the UK.

Cypher is a film that gets the tone and content of Gibson’s books just right mixed with a little Philip K Dick paranois. Unfortunately Gibson has nothing to do with the film.

Director Vincenzo Natali made the ingenious low budget film Cube which was critically acclaimed when it played at film festivals in 1998 and was a moderate hit on DVD. His follow up film Cypher remains largely unseen by the public and is a film that should have been embraced by William Gibson followers as well as science fiction fans. Interestingly enough Natali was a storyboard artist on the Gibson adaptation Johnny Mnemonic.

An unemployed accountant named Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) is bored with his suburban life. He decides to take a job as a corporate spy for the software company: Digicorp. He is sent to conventions around the country that are run by rival companies. Morgan secretly records presentations and sends them back to Digicorp.

Unfortunately just as Morgan begins to enjoy this new lifestyle he is plagued by headaches and recurring nightmares. At a hotel one night he meets a beautiful woman named Rita Foster (Lucy Liu) who works for a rival company. She gives him some pills in order to cure his pain and tells him not to transmit anything to Digicorp at the next presentation. He does what she asks and Digicorp mysteriously confirm receipt of a transmission anyway. Morgan is confused and takes the pill that Rita gave him. They arrange to meet and at their meeting Rita injects him with some form of ‘antidote’. Rita tells him that no matter what at the next presentation he must not react to what he sees.

At the next presentation Morgan discovers that all the convention attendees are in fact spies like him and that the drinks offered are in fact drugged. The attendees are all being brainwashed by Digicorp. Morgan carries on the charade with Digicorp pretending to be Morgan Sullivan and his personality starts to change from nerdy accountant to suave spy. He is then recruited by Sunway Systems which is Digicorp’s biggest rival. Sunway Systems convince Morgan to send corrupted data back to Digicorp. Rita then reappears and tells Morgan that he is in fact being used by a mysterious data terrorist known as Sebastian Rooks and that Sunway Systems is in fact just as ruthless as digicorp.
 
If the above plot sounds confusing that’s because it is. Rather than being a complex film that leaves lots of plot threads hanging though it all ties up come the ending with a twist reminiscent of The Usual Suspects. Vincenzo Natali makes the film look much more expensive that it is the way he did with Cube. Existing locations around Toronto are used in much the way that Michael Winterbottom used existing futuristic locations at Canary Wharf in Code 46. Astonishingly the budget was only $7.5 million.

The script by Brian King is tight and tense. A scene where Sullivan enters an underground vault to supply corrupted data to Digicorp is especially tense and well paced as is the scene where he remains awake at a presentation whilst all around him are drugged and being brainwashed. Jeremy Northam gives great performance as someone who goes from being a frustrated geek to a suave ruthless spy. Interestingly enough Northam was once a front runner to be James Bond and proves here that he could have handled the character no problem as well as the physical aspects of being Bond.

Although stylishly directed and visually very interesting the film never had a distributor get fully behind it and the film received very little marketing during its limited theatrical release. Two years after its UK cinema release, the film limped on to DVD in the USA. Its disappointing when films that are this intelligent get dumped so disgracefully and it seems to be happenning more and more with studios run like the ruthless corporations seen in Cypher. The film is enjoyed by the few sci-fi fans that have seen it and may well still find an audience one day through showings on television.

The talented Vincenzo Natali meanwhile has managed to get a new horror project off the ground called Splice which will star Adrien Brody and is produced by none other than Guillermo Del Toro. Here’s hoping that this film will catapult him onto the A-List and mean he has the freedom to make more intelligent sci-fi like Cypher.

Trivia: The number 0 is featured prominently throughout the movie, such in the overhead shots of the suburbs in the beginning of the movie.