Joshua Jacobs

Irony, ooooh bittersweet irony. Having incredibly recently visited the Matrix: Resurrections movie and universe, this clone comes along in the queue. Hardwired is sporting a pretty solid cast with Michael Ironside, Val Kilmer and Cuba Gooding Jr., an equally poor budget of 5 million dollars and the cover of a typical 90s action flick. Would it be possible to actually enjoy the 94 minutes of runtime?

Hardwired (2009) feels a little late to the party. Imagine having waited a whole pandemic to enjoy your favourite artist for a night together with friends. Loads of great music and some very tasty snacks are drawing you into the zone: this might be the best time of your life. Suddenly loUD NOISES at the entrance?? At the end of the event the local dubstep group stumbles through the entry. This bunch lacks just a littttle talent, making up for that with a liiiiittle too much to drink. They are here to set up the encore nobody wished for. This is Hardwired in a nutshell. Would you allow me to explain why?

Hardwired is a sciencefiction action movie, with some elements stolen from Total Recall and The Matrix for example. Basically after a tragic accident Luke Gibson (Cuba Gooding Jr) nearly loses his life, but the Hope Corporation hardwire an implant into his brain to save him. It sounds good but isn’t exactly free as he finds out really quickly.

The writer Michael Hurst and director Ernie Barbarash decided it’s better to nick details and go for the easy cover-up operation, than reinvent the wheel. It becomes evident in the storytelling, we really have the cast droning out the plot about Evil Corp X while nothing else is happening on the screen. This reeks of lazy writing. For reference: The Matrix creates the world around you in connecting sequences. If you steal, better make it work.

Fake your death please

Actors onscreen deaths can usually be brutal if the plot wants it. Here it’s clear as day the players are seemingly planning their own endings. At times you get the nasty feeling some of them don’t want to be there, especially high-profile mr. Val Kilmer. The guy has a reputation of being hard to work with, but his performance is as ridiculous as his hair style. This bad guy sounds as flat as a pancake and just does not air evil in his performance. “Did I have to the love of your life get killed in the place where you coincidentally had to be? Such a shame. Anyway, about that profit we were to make.”

Cuba Gooding Jr. at times makes more out of his script situation than his counterparts, but in my view the cake goes to Michael Ironside with the daddy-like feel. The voice of “Mister Splinter Cell” never misses an opportunity to make everything as serious as it needs to be. Although I wonder if any bloopers exist, this movie just doesn’t strike me as ‘that super-friendly cast who videocall each other every New Years Eve’.

Disconnected

Somewhat poor acting is not entirely up to the actors, it’s also down to the script. That seemed lazy and also rushed. There was some potential for Hardwired to grow beyond a straight-to-DVD release, but it loses touch with itself too many times. The action sequences are quite clean and reasonably good considering its meager budget. That’s alright.

Maybe involve an outside party to check the details and vibe, which is very inconsistent throughout the movie. It’s not like all is serious, for example the Cyberpunk family duo is tripping each other up quite badly and it’s pretty funny to see that even in darker moments the scene just lights up for a second.

There are bigger problems, though. At some parts the actors feel like they are just mechanical tools to carry out a part of the script. Then out of nowhere there is suddenly a load of drama, with nothing to lead up to those moments. This means things chronically end in poorly finished storyparts. It feels like both director and writer wanted to wrap up and go home for dinner: the director and especially the writer could have made more of the materials they had. Either that or adapt it to a series format, which would have likely worked better. If you decide to steal, you’d better put in the effort to make it work.

Final Conclusions

Storyline: 5/10. Too many loose ends, and lazy writing mostly ruins the movie.

Acting: 6/10. Tried and tested main cast can’t save a script that is all over the place.

Effects: 4/10. Movie seems pretty budgetfriendly for the editors. Even for 2009 effects are underwhelming.

Living up to Potential: 4/10. With a bit of stretching this could have become a series of 1 / 2 seasons.

Movie score: 4.95/10. If you’re a critical person, you probably want to skip to next movie in queue.