Sunday 16 January 2011

TRON: LEGACY

(Joseph Kosinski, 2010)

Narratively slight - and by slight I mean utterly predictable, its each and every beat familiar from a hundred other Joseph Campbell-borefest post-Star Wars genre films with dully one-dimensional characters and a leaden adherence to screenplay structure 101 - Kosinski's sequel to Steven Lisberger's 1982 Tron resembles that film by creating enough visual wonder to just about compensate for it's shortcomings as a piece of storytelling. For here is a fully realised world completely suited to 3D; a beautiful world of digital sheen and neon slickness, arc lit and perfectly hi-def in every frame. It is exquisite.
It makes a couple of desultory attempts at relevance; the Microsoftesque firm at the centre of the story wants to maximise profits by cheating users, while the Flynns think access to software should be free to all, yadda yadda yadda. .Luckily Kosinski can do action competently, and when his film is really pumping, when Daft Punk's exceptional soundtrack is filling the air with beams of synth and beats as fat as a sumo, when figures leap and roll away from glowing discs or fly along upon motorbikes as if they're riding hockey pucks, and that computer screen sky sucks all the light out of the frame, it is almost breathtaking. A fine visceral and sensual experience then, even if the undoubted highlight is the opening Tronification of the Disney logo.

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