A leggy dame walks into a private dick’s office. She looks like trouble with a capital T, but her case is straight-forward enough–“Find my lost set of keys”–and he’s got lots of time and nowhere else to be. He takes the case, which leads him into dark places where nothing is what it seems. This basic premise has been the starting point of countless great stories for more than 150 years, from the detective tales of Edgar Allen Poe to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled private eyes, and up to Bladerunner and Inception. Each of these variations put a different twist on the formula in a genre that offers a universe of possibilities but also a minefield of cliché. Reminiscence, the feature-film debut of writer-director Lisa Joy, is a grab bag of the former with a whole heap of the latter. Ultimately, the evocative world-building of the near-future setting is overcome by tired tropes that sap the drama of its forward momentum, resulting in a film about memory that’s easy to forget.
The opening shots set the scene in a Miami that’s been overcome with the sea, where skyscrapers and condos stand like islands in the tide and the old art deco neighborhoods have become a kind of latter-day Venice, crisscrossed with boat taxis. This setting is beautifully realized, not only visually but also in the depiction of the new economies and social attitudes that have evolved with the times. One has the sense that a lot of thought and creativity went into the layering of this world, which feels lived-in and workaday to its inhabitants. The wealthy have taken the high ground, the poor live among the rotting foundations, and the criminal underworld thrives on exploiting the disparities. In this context, where the future looks bleak, nostalgia for better days has become a commodity.
All of this is apparent on the screen, but the film’s first misstep is to spell it out in ponderous voice-over, which simultaneously explains everything while distracting from the splendid visuals. The voice belongs to Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a war veteran who has pivoted from his service as a military interrogator to a guy who runs a memory chamber for folks who want to relive moments from their past. Like many detective figures in the long tradition of the genre, he’s mostly a blank slate, a taciturn dude with a soft heart and some pent-up anger. Unfortunately, he’s not shy about exhaustively narrating the movie, explaining what’s happening while we’re seeing it, and the intrusion pulls the viewer out of the scene during key moments.
One such moment is the entrance of the femme fatale, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), whose opening scenes make for a nearly comical call-back to the cartoon hottie, Jessica Rabbit. Nick is enthralled, becoming obsessed with the mysterious woman who seemingly only wants to find her keys. Of course, the story is much more complicated than that, leading Nick on a dangerous search through the water-logged underworlds of Miami and New Orleans. None of it would be happening if he weren’t enchanted with Mae, but she has managed to hook him by singing an old torch song that snags on his own memories. His business partner, Watts (Thandiwe Newton), sees through Mae’s ruse, but her best efforts to extricate him–including one preposterous scene in which she slaughters an entire saloon full of mafia goons without getting a scratch–are no match for his wild-eyed obsession.
It’s unfortunate that the characters are so underwritten, since the setting and the premise are so well-developed and presented. The actors all sink their teeth into their roles, but, like Nick’s superfluous narration, there isn’t enough on the page for them to bring to the screen. Still, some gee-whiz moments nearly make the experience worth it, like the image of two figures plunging into an underwater ballroom as a grand piano sinks in a shaft of sunlight, or the scene where one character speaks to another across time by anticipating his later interrogation of a third character. In these moments, the promise of the story is realized, recalling some of the brilliance of Lisa Joy’s work on the mind-bending HBO series “Westworld.” Like that show, Reminiscence brims with fascinating ideas and the feeling of a fully realized near-future setting, while also stumbling on character development and dialogue. The series benefitted from being able to extend its storyline over multiple episodes, deepening the sense of mystery and intrigue, but in the limited frame of this feature film, the characters aren’t sturdy enough to sustain the arc of the high-concept premise. They meet, fall in love, fight like hell and look sexy doing it, but they don’t leave behind very much to remember.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
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