Silicon Towers (1999) starring Jonathan Quint, Daniel Baldwin, Kendall Clement, Brian Dennehy, Brad Dourif, George 'Buck' Flower, Robert Guillaume directed by Serge Rodnunsky Movie Review

Silicon Towers (1999)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Jonathan Quint in Silicon Towers (1999)

In Need of a Silicon Implant

Charlie Reed (Jonathan Quint) is considering moving on from his current job, that is until out of the blue he receives a promotion to a level 2 top security job when one of his colleagues mysteriously disappears. Shortly after he receives a mysterious encrypted email full of top secrets about what the company he works for has been up to involving hacking into banks with a computer chip they invented which is now used in computers all around the world. When his bosses discover that Charlie knows more than he should it causes him to have to go on the run whilst trying to get to the authorities to tell them what has been going on.

"Silicon Towers" is one of those movies which you see a few keywords in the synopsis, such as computers, hacking, banks and it is enough to sucker you into watching it. As you may gather by the use of "sucker" this is not a good movie and is nothing more than another one of those movies about an innocent man on the run from some corporate heavies who want to silence him. The familiarity of the theme is not the major issue but that despite some recognizable names such as Daniel Baldwin, Brian Dennehy, Brad Dourif and Robert Guillaume "Silicon Towers" is distinctly a low budget affair which is even outshone by some TV movies.

The trouble is that every bit of "Silicon Towers" is weak starting with the direction which when we are not served up static camera work of people talking lacks the excitement and freedom needed when it comes to the action scenes. Talking of which you must not pay too much attention to those action scenes as these scenes fall apart when focussed upon from poor editing to the miraculous nature that someone in peril manages to evade death such as a scene involving a car crash where one minute they are facing death and then the next are standing next to the wrecked vehicle. But there is more and we have characters who are flat cliches, the sort of characters who end up all about the accent rather than the character which unfortunately then focuses your attention on the dialogue which is mostly banal.

I could go on and on about "Silicon Valley" from lacking atmosphere to having some tacky computer graphics which look like they were done a decade earlier. But what is the most surprising thing about all of this is they got the likes of Daniel Baldwin, Brian Dennehy, Brad Dourif and Robert Guillaume to appear in supporting roles. Now these guys may not be the biggest of stars but they are certainly deserving of better than this.

What this all boils down to is that "Silicon Towers" is a seriously weak movie which really could have done with a silicon implant to give it some shape and something to look at.


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