adminReviewed by Prof Joel White
Cast: Gary Oldman, Amber Heard, L. Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Lucas Till, Embeth Davidtz, Julian McMahon, Josh Holloway, Richard Dreyfuss.
Director: Robert Luketic
Cinema: Eastgate
Running time: 113 minutes
Type of film: Corruption in corporate life
Age restriction: 16
THE film “Paranoia” purportedly presents and reports on the vicious and no-holds-barred competition which exists in today’s upper echelons of corporate life. And in accomplishing its purpose brilliantly, it reports on the feelings and motives of both the ultimate winners and the losers. For there is that code which inevitably dictates: for there to be real winners, there must also be losers.
Surprising, however, is the use of the medical and psychological term “paranoia”, which is properly and usually applied in cases where feelings of persecution are unwarranted. Whereas, in this film, great lengths are gone with specific acts of skulduggery which fully justify feelings of unmerited persecution.
Set in the very heart of New York City’s business district, I am always, and perhaps understandably, inclined to find deep merit in a film which takes me back to my home town.
Adam Cassidy is a graduate as I was of New York’s free university; for those who were in the top few percent of their high school classes. The film takes advantage of the belief currently diminishing in reality that “it is who you know that gets you ahead; not who you are”.
Adam Cassidy has obstacles ahead of him that are as real and true as they were 50 years ago. Can fault be found in his decision to rise in the city’s clearly defined opinion of who is worthy?
Hollywood has never apologised for presenting to us the relative ease with which those with Hollywood looks move perhaps unmerited to the top of any heap they choose to occupy. I often wonder if cinema audiences factor in as cause for success and acceptance the physical attractiveness entirely unearned of those they see on their screens.
We meet and deal with Adam’s relationship with his father; a widower and retired pensioner after 42 years as a lowly regarded security worker. The film clearly and worthily presents the raw material for a debate on exactly who it is who deserves and gets and the rewards our society delivers.
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