Stars Liam Hemsworth, Amber Heard, Lucas Till, Embeth Davidtz, Julian McMahon, Josh Holloway with Richard Dreyfuss Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford Directed by Robert Luketic When a movie is titled Paranoia, you might expect some kind of conspiracy movie with a purveying sense of paranoia lifting through the scenes. Those little glances from strangers, the camera lingering a little longer than expected on some extra passing by, and your main character definitely caught up in something he or she isn't fully clued in on. I always liked how Paul Verhoeven played up the paranoia angle in Total Recall (1990), or what Francis Ford Coppola did in The Conversation (1974). The problem here is that the movie title spells it out, and the main character, Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) is supposed to be smart, and yet not quite the brightest bulb in the room. On the outset, we're already clued in that the people pushing Adam's buttons are supposedly in control of the entire situation. The overall plot is a cat and mouse game between the two heavyweight performers, Gary Oldman as Nicolas Wyatt and Harrison Ford as Jock Goddard, Wyatt's former mentor and now main business competitor. It boils down to plain corporate espionage with Adam being the unwitting pawn in their game. Speaking of games, chess figures quite heavily in some scenes. But the paranoia itself never really sets in, not within the movie and not really for the Adam. So what we're left with is, at best, a decent old-fashioned thriller that betrays its bookish origins. The pulse of the movie blips along, getting the boost when either Oldman or Ford are on screen. The energy crackles even more when the two of them share the scene in two standout moments. Two moments that would give the movie a reason to be on the big screen, but little else to elevate it above the typical cable movie. Hemsworth carries most of the movie himself, but can barely sustain the charisma required. The rest of the young cast manage well enough and director Robert Luketic (21, The Ugly Truth, Killers) handles the material with workmanlike skill. Ultimately, it is a movie that you might watch if you came across it on cable, and aside from Oldman and Ford, there is little else to help keep it in mind.
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