 |
|||
 |
 |
||
 | |||
 | |||||||||||
|
|
Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue. The premise of The Trigger Effect is intriguing to say the least, people on the west coast lose their power and are forced to deal with it, but this is ruined by one of the most pessimistic views of human society since Terry Gilliam's Brazil. I think of myself as an optimist--the glass is half full, I still have a chance to make in to the NBA--and seeing a film with such a negative take on society both annoyed and disappointed me. I feel that people as a whole are better than they are portrayed to be, and just did not accept their malicious actions in this movie.I thought something could definitely materialize from a supposed nationwide power outage. People would have to cope without electronics, they would have to work together to help one another, and so on, but The Trigger Effect doesn't touch on any of this; no, this film is about the utter hell that breaks loose once the power is lost. Faster than you can say, "Maybe I should've watched Seinfeld instead", the poor begin robbing the rich, riots start, and there is looting enough to suggest that the Dodgers had just won the world series. David Koepp, who both wrote and directed The Trigger Effect, seems to have created a work here that enables us as viewers to see just how bad human beings are. In emergency after emergency, people go out of their way to not help each other, and in certain extreme instances force others to turn to crime because of their incivility. The Golden Rule? Now, let me think... No, no. Oh that Golden Rule... As if total chaos in L.A. wasn't enough to deal with, Koepp throws in some very weak racial issues as well. This starts in the opening scene as Kyle MacLachlan and Elisabeth tell two black guys to quit talking in a movie theater. From then on, Kyle and Elisabeth are constantly crossing paths with them, occasionally recognizing one another, occasionally not, finally meeting during the film's climax. After driving some 500 miles into the Californian desert, MacLachlan breaks into a house in search of something and, you guessed it, one of the black guys is living in that particular house. To put this distance in perspective, imagine yourself driving to Cleveland to see a movie and to go shopping for groceries. And I thought the commute to the Loop was bad... The one tremendous positive in The Trigger Effect comes with Koepp's choice of camera angles. Koepp often pulls the camera back from a scene as to allow other natural elements a chance to enter the scene and add flavor to the events. While MachLachlan, Shue, and Dermot Mulroney are stranded at the side of the road, Koepp shoots the three of them talking, with a crow, sitting on a branch in a dead tree, in the immediate foreground. This was Koepp's directorial debut, and in that field he shows tremendous promise. Unfortunately, his talent for writing clever screenplays seemed to be put on hold from the days when he wrote The Paper and Jurassic Park. Without Koepp's innovative direction, The Trigger Effect would have been a complete waste of money, but, as it stands, should just be avoided unless you're a new and clever camera angle junkie.
|
| |||||
