(aka, Scoper)
I’ve had a copy of this film sitting on my pile for some time and finally got around to it because my computer is currently down.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had a movie which has lingered for a long time in my “Inbox.”
Now I should start out by warning you that this is a low-budget independent film, one which, even under the best of circumstances isn’t going to look as good as a film made by some huge studio. One suspects that one of the largest chunks of their budget went to hiring Blair Brown and Wallace Shawn for important parts.
Which, yes, means that you aren’t going to get any dazzling images, or stunning visual effects.
For some strange reason or other, a lot of people see this film as more or less a rip-off of Inception. Frankly, that one puzzles me. This is more of a straightforward people-with-powerful-psychic-gifts film and, while there are secrets and even virtual fantasy worlds inside the “Scopers” minds, they are not in any way like the layers of dream worlds within Inception.
Joshua Lazarus is a “Scoper”: he has an incredible gift, an ability to see inside the minds of others. He is one of the children trained from childhood at the special school run by the genial Sandy (Wallace Shawn), so they can use their talents as intelligence agents for the NSA.
One of the terrible side effects of his talent is that Scopers eventually go insane, most of them before they turn 29.
And Joshua has just turned 28.
But, while he’s on assignment in a Latin American country, he realizes that there is another unknown Scoper interfering with his operation. It proves to be the daughter of his target who has apparently learned how to use her powers on her own.
And she is 32…
At first glance you might assume this is a standard variation on the whole familiar “telepaths as spies” storyline, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. There are plots, counterplots, secrets and the NSA lurking in the background.
But the real story here is a romance.
You see, Joshua finds his ultimate soulmate, and they share a lot of intimate moments together…
In their heads.
In fact, it’s rather ironic that they never actually so much as touch each other (well, until most of the way to the end), even though they are clearly in love. I’ll admit that I rather like this, particularly as we’ve seen Joshua use his abilities to find potentially willing girls and bed them.
Okay, this hands-off relationship is because they dare not get too close to each other, for fear of what the NSA will do, but it is still something you just don’t see in the movies these days, a loving relationship where the script doesn’t feel the need to get the two into bed together right away.
It’s almost counter-modern cultural.
Now, we talk about the telepaths creating virtual worlds within their minds, but you have to remember that they didn’t have the money for a lot of overblown CGI effects. The problem is that, rather than find some interesting locations, or using imaginative set decoration and lighting they chose instead to use some very minimal computer effects. They do at least suggest something colorful and imaginary.
But it wouldn’t have taken much to come up with something so much better.
On the whole the parts of the story dealing with psychics revolting against the government agency controlling them are far more compelling than the Romance. There is a fundamental problem here the story just can’t escape: how can a movie couple have any onscreen chemistry at all if they interact minimally, and then only within an imaginary realm? Even when we do finally get them together, they are in public, pretending not to be an item
It is a problematic choice.
As we spend so much time on the romance, the spy elements and the battling psychics elements don’t have enough room to flourish. There are several interesting ideas in the mix — like the mysterious Wittmer’s disease which has caused the death of so many Scopers — and it seems a shame that they weren’t developed further, in pursuit of a romance with very little fire to it.
Even there lots of unpursued possibilities lie about disregarded, particularly in the sequences where they merge their minds. Writer/Director Evan Oppenheimer chose to portray these with a blur of bits and pieces visions but there are so many possibilities of two people wandering through each other’s minds and what we could learn about them as characters.
Oh, well.
The Speed of Thought is a pleasant enough little film, but it really doesn’t work as either romance, spy drama, or warring psychics. While the ultimate secrets are quite dark, it never strays into Cronenberg territory, nor does it ever generate as much suspense as the story needed, even with a romance thrown in the mix to increase the threat to the characters.
It’s yet another of those films which achieves a bland okayness and little more. You won’t hate yourself for watching it.
But you might not remember too much about it afterwards.
And not just because some Scoper is trying to wipe it from your mind…
rivets on the poster 