Encrypt

Canada / USA • 2003 • 101m •

• Directed by: Oscar L. Costo. • Starring: Grant Show, Vivian Wu, Steve Bacic, Matthew G. Taylor, Naomi Gaskin, Wayne 'Crescendo' Ward, Art Hindle, Hannah Lochner, Vickie Papavs, Mairtin O'Carrigan, Carolyn Goff, Billy Otis, Mauricio Rodas. • Music by: Misha Segal.

By the year 2068, the Earth's ozone is gone, violent and uncontrollable storms are razing it's surface as a result. A small group of military survivors are the defenders of the last of human kind and when Captain John Garth is approached to do a job by a former brother-in-arms Lapierre, who is now employed by Reich, an eco-profiteer, in order to save his father & a few other survivors Garth agrees. He & a small group of mercenaries are to break into the near-impenetrable Vincent Estate & retrieve priceless works of "art" that were stored there before the apocalypse. But there is a deadly computer controlled defense system called "Encrypt" that they must circumvent, along with a killer robot called the Rook & the human-like holographic security chief Diana, who holds the key to Earth's total destruction---or it's complete salvation.

Review:

I have definitely seen worse movies than Encrypt. From the premise it seemed intriguing, but for some reason(maybe it was the fact that it was a low-budget TV movie) I was also dubious as to if it would be as good. It isn't quite, but it is not a complete waste of a good concept either. For instance, for a low-budget TV movie it actually looks quite good. The editing is crisper than I was expecting, the settings do at least have some atmosphere and the special effects are above average, not outstanding but not crude or artificial. There is only one exception, which was the robot that looked as though it would be more at home in the 30s, even then it was nowhere near as bad as special effects for other low-budget TV movies I've seen recently. The music has a suitably haunting quality, not over-bearing or sluggish-sounding. The acting is also above average, especially from Vivian Wu who is radiant and has a certain command, nobody's absolutely outstanding but again there is nobody terrible at the same time. The story also has points of interest, the psychological games between Wu and the hero are very intriguing especially. On the other hand, there are other scenes that do feel as though they were there for padding, consequently the pace drags at times. The ending also underwhelms, not in a rushed or abrupt sort of way but it did seem a little too easy and contrived for my liking. The dialogue is not as cheesy or as stilted as I feared, but it is rather talky with too-episodic a structure which drags Encrypt further. The characters are less stereotypical than you'd think but underdeveloped, and I really didn't see the need for a villain. All in all, not bad but at the same time I didn't care for it

Review by TheLittleSongbird from the Internet Movie Database.

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