Sadly Over-hyped

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

**SPOILERS** Surviving a brutal mugging where her husband was killed and she left totally deaf from the gunfire Liza Raines', Lucy Jenner, life went into a downward spiral. It's when it was decided to experiment on Liza's deafness by implanting a number of revitalized cells into her inner ear that she miraculously regained her hearing. This soon became a curse more then a blessing for Liza.These secret ear experiments conducted by Doctors Kramer & Hsieh, John De Lancie & George Takei, did in fact improve or cure their patients loss of hearing but also drove them both insane and suicidal. In fact of the 15 persons who were treated by the two doctors 14 of them ended up dead within the first three weeks with only patient #14 Liza Raines being the only one who survived!Not only did Liza survive with her hearing and health in tact but was able to not only hear what people say but what they think as well! Something that the top Washington D.C CIA Administrator Aiden Porter, Costas Madylon, became very interested in and wanted to have Liza put under his control.As we soon see Porter wasn't at all interested in the national security of the United States but the personal security of his himself and his job. Porter wants Liza to read the minds of his superiors like Let. Gen Geroge Humes, Tucker Smallwood, and use what dirty secrets that they have to blackmail them. This leads in Porter's finding out through Liza the thoughts and actions, in him being a pedophile, of a newly nominated Supreme Court judge who was going to vote against funding his agency. This not only forced the judge to withdrawal his nomination for the the Supreme Court but to hang himself in his garage!It's later when Liza realizes what her boss Aiden Porter is up to in using her unique ability to farther his own power in government, to both blackmail and murder, that she started to use them against him. That's in exposing Porter's plans in him becoming the power behind the President and the Congress in running the country anonymously and without being challenged by the election process. But before Liza can do that she has to prevent Porter from murdering her, like he already did Doctors Kramer & Hsieh, in order to prevent Liza from bringing the truth out about him and his diabolical future plans to the public!

Contrary to the previous reviewer, it is precisely the fact that you have to constantly hear multiple streams of thought of a few people at the same time, and decide what is "noise" and what is "important" what made this movie most interesting and enjoyable for me.It is a psychological experience that is exactly the opposite of what you normally do all day long... paying attention to the one stimulus that you already know is important in the given situation while what is not important automagically gets filtered out by your senses.For a layperson (regarding the complex machinery of your senses) this movie gives you a "hands on" way of appreciating the valuable work your senses do for you all the time, filtering out irrelevant information for you. Even if you are acquainted with the science behind the senses, this movie shows you how you probably would go insane if this filtering were not part of our makeup.

Although it was slow at times it shed light of a TV series idea in the commentary on the DVD. There have been other series that was about a real person or a real thing, so a focus on the character so a focus of day to day life could work. I have come upon movies that have a potential TV series idea and now if they would stop calling this just a TV movie they have something worth it. I like a movie about a real possibility and this is it, watch it if you like science fiction or science fact. I know this is science fact some say no but a series like this could beat other shows so I hope this is going somewhere. Another thing my medical problems with my brain (epilepsy) years ago could have given me a better life if only something like this had happened to me.One thing that many people say that several minds being listened to at once would be hard. In a crowd of people and all are talking and you want to hear one you focus on that voice. It's the same with the mind voice. I have talked to several of my doctors and they have commented that it is a real possibility.

The premise that a person could hear other peoples thoughts all the time would of course be distressing to the person involved, however, the way that it's implemented into this film is that you, the viewer, have to listen to the same constant babble of peoples thoughts while trying to work out what is being discussed in the current conversation.Trying to listen to several different voices at once and trying to understand what they are all saying makes this film a very stressful one to watch. Ideally you'd just pay attention to the main conversation but they're at a volume that makes this just not possible.To be honest, I didn't watch this film all the way through, I can't recommend it.