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Narcosys

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Christopher Null
Christopher Null founded Filmcritic.com in 1995.
Somewhere between The Matrix and a home video of a game of Laser Tag lies Narcosys, a low-budget, sci-fi video production with music video values (fog, strobe lights, banks of video monitors, and lots of dancing) and a merciful dearth of dialogue.

What dialogue there is -- and by implication, what story there is -- is hard to follow, thanks to thick accents and lofty/laughable lingo. Not that it matters much: the story is pretty much Blade Runner but set half in an uurban dystopia and half around a rural oil refinery. Animated spaceships that fly -- irony-free -- around our gang of cyberpunky heroes. There's something about a virus infecting the 'drug supply' -- whatever that is -- and the search for uncontaminated goods, but this is one of those movies that plays better with your own soundtrack. There's only so much skateboarding and speechifying one person can take, but if you've got a vinyl or a gas mask fetish, well, have I got the movie for you!

The movie does look surprisingly good for its indie pedigree,but I can't help but wish for a better script that put more emphasis on imbuing its ragtag bunch of characters with actual personalities instead of the usual poser histrionics. Blade Runner's a classic not because its neo-Tokyo Los Angeles is so dismally cool, but because its hero and villains were so incredibly memorable. In Narcosys, I didn't even know who to root for.

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