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reminiscence movie

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Bob Hoose

Movie Review

Nick was tired, ready for the day to end. His days hadn’t been all that fruitful and rewarding lately anyway, but today he was just shot.

Then she walked in.

Nick’s partner, Watts, called out that they were closed. But Nick couldn’t help buy hold up a hand and say, “We have time for one more.” This beautiful woman with her red hair and classy dress simply stopped him dead in his tracks.

She wanted to remember where she’d left her keys, she said. That may seem like an odd thing to ask someone for, but helping people remember is Nick’s specialty. In fact, taking people back to relive their memories is his job.

He first used the memory device, and his abilty to ease someone into their past, back in the service, while interrogating enemies. Then after the war ended and the great environmental disaster hit, Nick and Watts had teamed up to make a business of it. In their grimy, waterlogged world of Miami, where they’re constantly wading through knee-deep water and sleeping all day to escape the sweltering heat, helping people to relive past memories is a good business to be in.

After helping the woman in red, Mae, find her keys, though, things shifted for Nick. He started seeing her. He started falling in love with her. And suddenly, he wasn’t so much interested in looking back, as he was in looking forward. He’d been lonely, empty. She made him feel full.

But then she walked away.

For some unknown reason, Mae disappeared. After a few months of searching, Watts was telling Nick to let it go, let her go. He’d never really known “that woman” all that well anyway, Watts reminded him. But Nick couldn’t let anything go.

Nick was determined to find the woman he loved. He’d keep digging, he’d look in every dark corner, search every dark memory until he’d found a trace of her once again.

Nick is an expert at manipulating other people’s pasts, but he sure isn’t going to waste his time fretting over his own. Not when there is still a chance to make new memories with Mae.

Positive Elements

Nick’s a good man at heart. Not only does he take steps to find and help Mae and others, but when a foe is trapped and dying, Nick rescues him and almost dies in the process. Later, after making a vile choice for revenge, he returns and confesses his wrong, accepting whatever punishment the law demands.

Mae and Nick voice their love for one another. Mae gives her all to save and protect an innocent.

Spiritual Elements

Nick tells a story of someone going to hell to rescue a loved one.

Sexual Content

Mae is a nightclub singer. Accordingly, we see her in a variety of slinky dresses designed for their seductiveness. One, for instance, bares her shoulders and upper chest, another her whole back.

When she first comes in to have her memory searched, she disrobes completely (though we see only her bare back and shoulders, while Nick looks away from her public nudity) before getting into the memory tank (much like a water-filled isolation tank). At other times, other men and women climb into the tank, too, wearing skimpy bathing suits.

Eventually, Nick and Mae connect physically. Passionate kissing is seen, and his shirt is removed in a sensuous scene in which she also straddles him on a chair. The camera cuts away, and Nick awakens shirtless in her bed. The two caress one another later. She lies face down with a bare back on a picnic blanket. During one of Mae’s memories we see a sex toy on her bedroom floor. When visiting her nightclub for the first time, Nick mentions how lovely Mae’s voice is. “Four years I’ve worked here, and you’re the first man who’s mentioned my voice,” she smilingly replies.

In a memory, we also see that Mae had a relationship years before with a drug dealer named St. Joe. They kiss. St. Joe is generally always shirtless or wearing an open front shirt. We see the memories of several people recalling passed loved ones (including a male couple holding hands).

Violent Content

Nick doesn’t seek out violence, but it tends to find him in the midst of his investigations anyway. He’s manhandled repeatedly—while throwing punches and elbows—for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he barely keeps from being shot and killed once or twice.

Two large men attempt to drown Nick in a tank of live eels. He engages in a long chase and fight with a large opponent, they leap from buildings, smash windows, tumble down a staircase and lash at each other with fists and various weapons (such as a hammer, a lead pipe and a knife). One man gets his arm caught inside a piano and is dragged down by the piano into a huge flooded amphitheater.

Watts is said to be an excellent shot during the war, and she proves it in a gunfight with a room full of thugs and drug dealers. One guy goes flying across the room after being hit with a shotgun blast. Others run and get hit with pistol fire. Another man is shot in the back just before killing Nick. These battles are lightly bloody but not gory. The bloodiest kills are kept off screen. For instance, Nick shoves a needle into someone’s eye, but the camera cuts away before impact.

A woman jumps to her death. Another woman is stabbed in the stomach. A man is guided back to a memory of torment when he was covered in fuel and lit on fire. In the memory he thrashes and screams. And at the same time in the real world he’s given the equivalent of a memory overdose while hooked to the memory machine—he’s left to thrash around, mentally reliving his agony and torment over and over. Someone is executed (off screen).

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and four s-words join with a half-dozen uses of “a–” and a few uses of “h—,” “d–n” and “b–ch.”  Jesus and God’s names are misused five times (combining God with “d–n” on three of those). A crude comment is made about male genitals.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Nick and Watts use an injected sedative to help patients with the memory process. And Nick takes hypodermic needles full of the stuff with him on his investigations. We also witness Nick injecting himself with the drug repeatedly as he works to plum his own memory for clues about Mae and her whereabouts.

The drug trade in this world centers around an illicit substance called Bacca. And we see several people partake. One person is forced to swallow the drug. She then stuffs more of the drug in her mouth and takes her own life. One person is an obvious addict.

It’s also obvious that Watts is an alcoholic. She drinks from a flask and a bottle at different times and talks about trying to “dry out” at one point, unsuccessfully. Nick, Mae and others imbibe as well. We see people drinking in a bar.

A police detective and another woman smoke cigarettes.

Other Negative Elements

Old memories reveal some characters’ past misdeeds.

Conclusion

Just the idea of a film harkening back to the classic Warner Bros. detective movies of yore has its appeal. And you can see that first-time director Lisa Joy (of HBO Westworld fame) is trying to tap into something like that—mixing a sprinkle of Philip Marlowe in with some futuristic dystopian grit and sci-fi tech.

On paper then—with the likes of Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson playing the lead roles—Reminiscence must have looked so promising. On screen, though, not so much.

There are moments here that work, scenes when everything sparks just so. But most of this pic feels a bit too aimlessly rambling, impossibly coincidental and pointlessly thin. And that’s just the list of problems with the story.

Add in this movie’s grimy, futuristic version of Miami—what with its rough language, sexually charged relationships, drug use and lethal streets—and this is no cinematic vacation spot worth visiting … or reminiscing about.

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.