Wow! Such a good movie.

Sick Product of a Sick System

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

At least within my base of movie viewing experience, I found this to have an original and creative story.As others have commented, the special effects are incredible considering the technology of the time.

Not a great flick but I can see why it has a cult following. For whatever reason I think it would make a great reboot project - if so many of its elements weren't already usurped, Matrix I'm looking at you.

This film essentially begins with a young man named "Cameron Vale" (Steven Lack) walking into a mall to grab a bite to eat. However, there appears to be something terribly wrong with him which causes a woman sitting at another table to remark about it to her friend. Upon overhearing her comments the young man then appears to concentrate on her which causes her to go into a type of seizure requiring others to come to her aid. It's also during this time that other men enter the mall and after a short chase finally subdue the man and subsequently transport him to a secluded room inside a large corporate building belonging to a private security firm known as ConSec. Upon regaining consciousness he meets a man by the name of "Dr. Paul Ruth" (Patrick McGoohan) who gives him more information about his psychic powers and also warns him about another psychic named "Darryl Revok" (Michael Ironside) who has waged a deadly war on everyone like him. This prompts Cameron to join with Dr. Ruth to find Darryl Revok so that ConSec can apprehend him before he can kill anybody else. What nobody knows, however, is that Darryl has informants everywhere and is using them to eliminate everyone who comes into contact with Cameron. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a decent science-fiction film for the most part but it suffered from some scenes which were a bit slow and lengthy. That being said, I should probably mention that I watched the long version which was about 137 minutes and for that reason there were probably scenes which were allowed to continue without the editing found in the 103 minute version. On a similar note, I also didn't especially care for the ending which came off as somewhat ambiguous. But all things considered, I didn't think that this was a bad film by any means and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

David Cronenberg's 1981 sci-fi/horror film stars Stephen Lack, Michael Ironside, Jennifer O'Neill, Lawrence Dane and Patrick McGoohan. Lack plays Cameron, a man who has a special gift of mind control called "scanning." He's a test subject of scientist, Paul Ruth (McGoohan) and soon he's sent to find and kill dangerous man, Revok (Ironside) who is also a scanner and his followers. Dane plays Keller, Revok's associate who is a traitor of Ruth and O'Neill plays Kim, a scanner who becomes Cameron's love interest. This is a pretty good film with bloody, suspenseful and disturbing moments. Ironside plays a good villain as usual, Dick Smith's make-up effects are impressive and Howard Shore's score is great as usual. I recommend this.