This is kinda how I picture the future, only with more ads and a jumbotron. What am I talking about? Today’s premise is a Big Brother tomorrow dreamed up by the people who fear everything [read: the Republican Party]. Every man, woman, and child has a corneal implant that allows us not only to scan an see the details of any anonymous stranger, but also makes a video recording of everything you see. So if you saw me walking down the street towards you, a bubble would appear over my head instantly delivering a mini bio: “STEEL FROG … Resident of Oakland, CA … Leo/Cancer cusp … Talks fondly of long walks on the beach, but then prefers to go to the movies instead … Obsessed with Tyler Perry … once got kicked out of the Sydney Opera House …” And as your eye caught this information, the visual would be recorded, forever. These recordings can be transferred in –literally- the blink of an eye and are instantly accessible by the authorities.
And –hold on to your Bill of Rights- we seem to be rooting for the cops here. Hmmmm. Well that doesn’t sit well; let’s just see where it goes.
Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) is a Big City detective in this Big Brother world. It’s hard to know how much stock to attach to that title. Anybody who manages to reach detective in a metropolitan area probably deserves your respect, but exactly how hard is your job when every single crime committed has an accessible video recorded eye witness? Seems like anyone could do that job … I mean, how do you discount direct recorded eye-witness accounts? Oops. Forgive me. I forgot for a moment we live in a Trump world where facts and scientific evidence no longer hold value. Perhaps Sal deserves our respect after all.
The venue seems to be New York City, yet it’s exactly as uncrowded as the film needs it to be, which is not the NYC I know. One day, Sal is doing his usual routine and passes a woman (Amanda Seyfried) who has no automatic data record pop-up. The movie never names her, so I’m just gonna call her Mailer Daemon. Sal finds Mailer’s lack of system presence unnerving, and –gosh, what a coincidence—it turns out there’s an unsolved murder that very day. What were the odds?
So I’m guessing murders generally get solved by detectives checking out the visual record of the victim at time of death, and then say, “Go get that guy.” The whole detection process generally takes about 30 seconds. In this case, however, the killer hacked into the visual of the victim to present his murder as only from the perspective of the murderer. Well, gosh Sal, don’t look now, but you might actually have to do some work here.
Of course, policework in this state without private information is a lot different than one might imagine – there’s a lot less (BAM! BAM! BAM!) “OPEN THE F***ING DOOR!!” and a lot more of dudes sitting quietly at a table accessing POV files from ambulatory folks. It’s like a round robin table discussion where nobody has the speaking idol. The film develops less on the societal and detection angles and more on the minutiae of Sal’s pathetic life. Sal has to go undercover, you see, to figure out how to ID Mailer Daemon. I can’t really fault Amanda Seyfried or Clive Owen here; both seemed to 
understand their roles in this cat-and-cybermouse chase, but the film fell distinctly flat once the investigation reached stage 2.
Anon had the potential to be a pretty good film; here’s the dystopia, here’s the cop, here’s the femme fatale, here’s the intrigue. It’s a tad Blade Runner-ish, but you can do worse. Thing is, there’s only one suspect in this film, the records access process while being extremely user-friendly is also extremely viewer-stupid (pardon me while I sit here and stare), and –like most of the other people in the film- Clive Owen spends a great deal of time here doing nothing. Well, hey, you save on sets when there’s nothing going on. That all I can live with; the biggest gripe I have about this film is the future is half-assed. You’ve shown the Big Brotheriness, yes, now show us how normal people react to Big Brotheriness. Not the exceptional hackers who know how to beat the system; show how normal people deal with THE MAN having access to every move you make … how would you react to that? Unfortunately, I don’t need films that save money on sets and I don’t a half-assed view at a possible future and I don’t need an unhealthy amount of Amanda Seyfried; so close and yet … no.
When your life is there for transmitting
There’s no point in any bullshitting
Everything is known
All viewpoints are shown
And yet y’all are still just sitting
Rated TV-MA, 100 Minutes
Director: Andrew Niccol
Writer: Andrew Niccol
Genre: Our screwed Big Brother future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Philip Dickensians
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Fourth Amendment fans
