The Anomaly
The Anomaly
PG-13 | 04 July 2014 (USA)
The Anomaly Trailers

A former soldier is taken captive and awakens in the back of a van where he learns that he only has less than 10 minutes to figure out how he got there.

Reviews
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I would begrudge the time to write a review, but when I have to abandon a movie - I have time I might otherwise have wasted watching it!The acting lacked commitment, and frankly lacked talent too. The story-line, as far as I got, was uninvolving and failed to suspend my disbelief, or entertain me. The action scenes plainly lacked budget, but also showed little imagination. The cinematography was non-existent, and why did they film almost every single conversation at 45degrees over the shoulder - it was like watching the regional news. The fights were badly edited, poorly shot, and suffered terrible choreography - you could see people trying to find their next positions, awkwardly. There was simply no sense of energy or realism to them.Now I would say, they should have looked at the fights in the Matrix, amongst a great many others... However, they clearly did look! They copied ideas, moves and scenes from all sorts of other films, but failed to honour any of them in the process

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TdSmth5

A guy wakes up in a room. There's a flashlight. He finds a kid chained to a wall. He frees him. They tinker with a wall and turns out they are inside a moving armored vehicle. No problem, they just push the door open and jump out when it stops and walk away. They are in London in the future. Well, the guys in the front aren't happy and start chasing them. The two escape to a cemetery where the kid tells him that men in red masks killed his mom. When the bad guys arrive, it turns out that Ryan has some fighting skills and he beats one of them. The other guy knows him. When Ryan starts going through his own pockets he finds a gun and a red mask. But suddenly something strange happens.Now he wakes up several days later in a room with books and with some type of plan on the wall. The bad guy is there as well. He talks to Ryan as if they work together on some project. We learn more about Ryan. He was military and confined to an institution for PTSD, panic, and anxiety. The boss and researcher there is Dr. Langham who took care of him. The bad guy is working on something that involves the kid.Again something jarring happens and Ryan wakes up having sex with a prostitute in New York days later. He remembers the kid and decides to take the prostitute with him, but first he has to go through her Russian pimp. More fights ensue. He promises her freedom of she helps him find the kid. Good thing he remembers information from the previous episodes and he notices that each time he has about 10 minutes to get things done before he's transported elsewhere. They escape but the Russians are in pursuit and they also run into the police.Next he wakes up in a room where a guy is being waterboarded by police. He's there as some physician who OKs whether to continue or stop the "interrogation". The victim is some researcher named Leonid. The two manage to escape. But at every turn the bad guy appears.Through more of these episodes we discover that Ryan has received some implants by a corporation run by the good Dr. Langham who now has the kid. The aim is through these implants to control people. The problem is that Ryan's implants have a connectivity issue with the satellite which is why he gets these 10 minutes where he gets to be himself. During the other times his body is controlled by Langham. Ryan with the help of the prostitute will try to stop the Langham project to control all humanity and to rescue the kid. He'll have to confront Langham and the bad guy who always shows up and is actually Langham's son.The Anomaly is interesting and a bit original. It mixes science with futuristic sci-fi with a fight action movie and all told in these short episodes. The science is the strongest aspect. There are also some interesting ideas about humanity and control. I wouldn't recommend looking for plot holes though because there are plenty. The weakest are the fights. Oddly enough it seems that the filmmakers knew the fights were weak too, and how could they not, however instead of trying to mask the weakness they further enhanced it with tricks designed to make good fights look good. Here instead we have several poor fights that looks even worse. They used some jumping camera work and Matrix-like slow-mo editing, which works when fights are fast at normal speeds. But if you have slow and weak punches to begin with and slow them down, well, the result is nothing to brag about. Another problem is the completely uncharismatic lead and a dry villain. You do end up disliking the bad guy mostly because he's a bit annoying and because his role isn't thought out well, but you certainly don't care at all for the hero. Things improve casting-wise once the lovely Alexis Knapp appears, unfortunately she doesn't get enough to do. The Anomaly is an intriguing, good looking movie that creates more expectations than it fulfills.

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webdawg-171-734559

Original ideas, kick ass fighting. Too many films now a days just fit in, this one seemed to be different, and it takes a second to really figure out what is going on.I think the guy should have taken immediate action when he phased back in. I mean, he is an incredible fighter, they should have turned him into a prolific figure.If you think about it, at the end, they both control the world (if the lab was not destroyed.) It was like schizophrenia with out being crazy and I think they should have played with that concept more.It is what it is, and it was great. It stands on its own, and that is the best part.

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Nathaniel Jones

I'm seeing some mixed reviews on this so I'd thought I'd stop in and leave my two cents.Firstly... The action gets good. There are moments that clearly were matrix inspired and were as cool as it comes.Secondly... The mystery and watching the main character solve it was fantastic. The premise of waking up in random places with only 8 minutes to figure out why is a really cool one... Has a touch of Dark City if you would.The acting was fair enough, the choreography was well done, and anyone ranking this lower than a 6 clearly has wayyyyy too high expectations for movies.(Pats back.) "Get outside buddy. Take a walk once in a while. You don't have to hate something because it wasn't the best something ever."Regardless... Its not Avatar 2... But.Its worth a rent or a watch and is a great distraction for a Tuesday night.Ultimately, this was not a bad movie at all... Its great science fiction. So don't let a few bad reviews turn you off to a cool experience. You'll be missing out on some really great moments.N

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