Darkdrive

1997
3.1| 1h28m| en
Details

Set in some distant future, one man must restore order when a mainframe system crashes in a virtual reality prison where computers control the inmates thoughts.

Director

Producted By

Unified Film Organization

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Reviews

GamerTab That was an excellent one.
Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
fizzgig-94296 I just watched this film today for the first time, nearly 20 years after it was made. It is a very confusing story line, but cool characters and excellent background music. It reminded me of a whole chain of other excellent films that could have been inspired by this one even though it wasn't clear exactly what was going on all of the time. My view is that it was the first inspiration for a reality world in the matrix using that description, but had a groundhog day feel to it and also a dark city feel to it, as we tried to solve the mystery of the breach of the matrix. In my view the story also has a hint of the looper in that the main character closes his own loop. The young girl getting caught in the matrix explains how he broke the breach the first time, as she entered from the street and so it showed that it was possible for the prison to be breached. So many interpretations of the story can be made, but my interpretation is that he may have put his wife there himself knowing that the mind essence doesn't die in the prison, but persists and changes form as they show the goons don't die when they are killed. Maybe he intended to live forever in the matrix with his beloved as it was better than the existing world? From the outside the breach is fixed but maybe he has the final revenge? Because it is so confusing it is almost impossible to discuss this film without some kind of interpretation spoiler but would be curious to know if anyone else enjoyed this film as I did!
TheLittleSongbird I always aim to be fair to movies in reviews and ratings, I always try to know what to expect before viewing, I never bail out after a certain amount of time, I try to be as succinct and unbiased as possible and be understanding of other people's opinions instead of generalising or attacking(on a side note, people can do with this and they'll be surprised at how easy it is). I gave that treatment to Darkdrive and while I have seen much worse I still didn't like it. It is not entirely irredeemable, the music manages to be memorable and fitting, Julie Benz has a beautiful face and appealing presence that really shines through and Clare Stansfield is very cool. However there is so much that is wrong. The worst asset was the story which I found impossible to follow, in fact I don't think I have ever been this confused by a movie before. As a consequence of that, and the turgid pacing too, I never had any engagement or emotional attachment to the action or characters. Any suspense, memorable action move or humour just wasn't there in Darkdrive, there were probably attempts that didn't come through, at least to me. The dialogue is clichéd and stilted while the rest of the acting is at best dire. The camera work and angles get too much, there was an attempt to tell the story through them but with that tactic everything just felt incomprehensible, and the special effects look as though they belong in a very cheap-looking movie from the 80s. All in all, not the worst I've seen but lame. 3/10 Bethany Cox
junk-monkey I often watch movies that make no sense in which characters keep doing stupid things that make no sense for them to do merely to keep the plot going ("Do NOT ever go into that cellar!), or built on premises that defy most known logic to start with (The Giant Claw springs to mind for some reason) but Darkdrive really does make no sense. It starts out by looking like it is going to make sense - in an incredibly clunky, by the numbers clichéd manner; the first act is almost a paint-by-numbers assemblage of stock action thriller lines - but by the end all semblance of logic had been thrown out of the window and driven away to the local dump.At the start of the movie our hero is a whizz-kid programmer working for a morally dubious corporation who runs the penal system of the future by digitising villains into a virtual prison - called guess what? 'The Matrix' - and 'terminating' the bodies. By the end of the movie he is trapped in the self same virtual reality prison with his dead wife and a little girl who had a couple of lines at the start of the show, caught in some endless looping mashup of Groundhog Day / Existenz / Overdrawn at the Memory Bank but with more guns and swearing. The hero meets himself and turns out to be the baddie as well. Though how he got there before he got there to find himself is never explained. In fact no one knows why anyone is in there - or indeed how they got there (Mrs Hero for instance was blown up by a booby-trapped picnic hamper in the middle of a field*, nowhere near the brazzillion tons of special effects - OK, a chair and an arc lamp - needed to get her husband Tronned). It almost becomes hypnotically wonderful, as if David Lynch had directed Time Cop. (A feeling heightened by great chunks of the music which was as near to being Laura's Theme from Twin Peaks as you could get without being sued.) I may watch it again.* Never, EVER! tell your husband you're pregnant just after he's walked out on an Evil Corporation.
Claudio Carvalho When I saw the name of Julie Benz on the cover of this VHS, I have decided to see the movie since I am a great fan of her character Darla, in Angel series. Further, she has one of the most beautiful faces of the cinema industry. However, this movie is such a mess, that is almost impossible to understand the plot and write a summary of the story. The intention of this confused screenplay might be a noir version of `The Matrix', but it never works. The characters are not well developed and it is almost impossible to the viewer understand their motives. For example, who is the girl showed in the end of the story? Why Julie Falcon dies many times? In the end, the unique worthwhile scene along the whole film is when Julie Benz is showed naked, unfortunately with the presence of her husband Falcon. My vote is one.Title (Brazil): `Fuga Alucinante' (Hallucinated Escape')