You’ll want to switch it off, but you’re unlikely to switch it on again.
If you thought lacklustre 2006 Harrison Ford cyber-thriller “Firewall” was just too action-packed, then have I got a movie for you. Best cancel all your plans, because this is one “I.T.” call that’s beyond a helpline.
As self-made aviation millionaire Mike Regan (Pierce Brosnan) prepares to launch a new App (Uber for private jet billionaires) and take his company public, he asks an IT intern to come to his home and sort the wifi out. Unfortunately, the intern takes this familiarity as a sign of friendship and when his advances to Regan’s daughter are rebuffed, things turn nasty.
It should be evident by now that, in general, I.T. and hacking and inherently uncinematic and the convoluted story does little to make them so. The aviation connection means nothing to the plot, and the App itself is irrelevant beyond trying to give the whole thing a veneer of topicality. Worse still, the plot requires Mike Regan, the avionics CEO, to be both a technological dunce and simultaneously live in the world’s most high-tech, connected ‘Smart’ house which neither he nor his family seem to like very much.
Brosnan seems tired and firmly disinterested in the material, reluctantly rousing himself to “Taffin” levels of ham when the script requires him to emote. Anna Friel is utterly wasted in a thanklessly underwritten role as Regan’s wife and the fact that Brosnan having improbable difficulty with Lego (I am not kidding) forms the foundation of the film’s most tense scene tells you everything else you need to know about this underclocked techno-thriller.
“I.T.” wants to be a topical, cautionary tale about the dangers of technology and the risks of the ‘internet of things’ to privacy and security but due to a disinterested cast, anaemic direction and a leadenly plotted script it ends up being a whiny rich people’s first world problems snoozefest.
4/10
