I have just given up watching the film 'Conspiracy Theory' (a film made 14 years ago but I am still going to give a 'review' of it now). I was watching on channel five, so I possibly shouldn't have held out too much hope of actually being decent, but they show NCIS so it can't all be horrific shite. Really I just sort of fell into watching it as I failed to find anything else in the TV guide that looked like it might hold my interest before it started. I was slightly dubious as it was scheduled to finish at 12.45am, but thinking I could stomach that if it were any good I gave it a try.
I know a number of people who would probably think that was madness enough being that how up front it is about being a Mel Gibson film. But I'm a modern guy, I'm open minded. I don't mind that he might be anti-semitic, as long as he does it in his own time and doesn't bring it to work, and thus my living room. I was more concerned about it being a Julia Roberts film; the woman is either incapable of walking like an actual human being or just determined to waddle about like a goose in a dress. Seeing her shoulders strut back and forth as she enters and leaves every scene leaves me often unable to suspend any disbelief. 'Conspiracy Theory' seems to have caught Julia Roberts at some goose-lite phase; that or she'd just not had enough screen time by the time I gave up to nark me off.
The film seemed opens with Mel Gibson driving a taxi and spewing every pulp conspiracy theory known to mankind at his fares whilst the credits play as reflections of neon lights in the windows. This is actually the best part of the film that I saw. The next 45 minutes were mostly made up of noise, flashing lights and incoherently babbling. I really wish I could explain it in closer to the amount of detail that I gave to making disparaging comments about the stars of the film and the channel I was watching, but I honestly don't think that anything happened that was intelligible enough to comment upon. Perhaps if I had stuck it out for another 2 hours it would have come together and I would now be writing a fawning blog post about a wonderful film that works on multiple levels, but I've seen the RottenTomatoes.com scores and reviews so I doubt it.
I think I was was disinclined to giving the film the benefit of the doubt and a fair shake as it just didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It had all the hallmarks of being a half decent spy-fi-esque suspense thriller, with an unassuming protagonist who might know more than he should ready to go on the run evading "the man" and eventually discovering the truth and bringing the seedy underbelly in to the light and bang to rights. But then it kept undermining itself with unnecessary moments that bordered on slapstick comedy during Gibson's character's 'escape' from torture at the hands of Partick Stewart. This was then followed by one thing that really irks me in movies: characters demonstrating an seeming absolute lack of common sense. Gibson arrives at Roberts's place of work to be carted off to hospital whilst running his mouth with obvious incoherent and nonsensical retellings of what has happened to him. But Roberts swallows this as gospel to the point of trying to get Gibson to calm down as they needed his help to, and I quote, "find the man who stabbed [him] with the wheelchair".
I am fairly confident in my ability to truthfully and accurately say that no one has ever been stabbed with a wheelchair. If anyone were ever to declare to me otherwise and that, yes, they had indeed been stabbed with a wheelchair I think I my knee jerk reaction would be to make a colourful exclamation referencing the male groinal attachments. This was the straw that broke the camel's back; if straws were asinine comments and my mettle to endure more crap were a camel's back. This may make me fickle, or glib, or unfair but I just didn't feel the previous 45 minutes had offered me anything to justify giving the film the benefit of any doubt. But, please, if you have seen this film and I am wrong then let me know and we can discuss it. I promise I will listen unstubbornly to your learned opinion and possibly even be left with the desire to give this travesty another chance if provided with reason to doubt my standing opinion.
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