CAST & CREW
Featuring Jason Bateman
Hope Davis & Frank Grillo
Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin
Running Time: 108 Minutes
Rated R
Reviewed by Stephen Holden - NYT
The jittery characters who scuttle through the three stories that make up “Disconnect” are struggling to make their way through today’s treacherous cyberwilderness. Some are predators, others prey. Naïve travelers who venture into territory taken over by upstart tribes of technological outlaws risk being ambushed, fleeced and humiliated. Law enforcement is often helpless to catch up with tricksters adept at staying ahead of the game.
How the movie, directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (the documentary “Murderball”) from a screenplay by Andrew Stern, will be received probably depends on the age and digital sophistication of the viewer. Those proficient with Facebook, Twitter, Skype, webcams and smartphones may find “Disconnect” too obvious and blithely dismiss its alarmist attitude as fuddy-duddy. And moviegoers weary of the schematic everything-is-connected school of films like “Crash,” “Babel” and “Short Cuts” may blanch at the recycling of the convention, even though this film’s theme is connectivity and its discontents.
But those struggling to keep up with changing technology may shudder at the portrayal of cruelty unleashed by bullies and thieves who blithely hide behind disguises, dig up personal information with a few keystrokes and destroy people.
The juiciest of the stories involves Nina (Andrea Riseborough), an attractive, ambitious television reporter for a local station in a New York suburb. Her investigation of chat sites involving underage teenagers is widely praised but then backfires after her journalistic coup comes to the attention of the F.B.I., and she is pressed to reveal her source.
Nina suddenly faces the prospect of having to betray Kyle (Max Thieriot), a saucy teenage exhibitionist who calls her a puma (the step before a cougar) and coaxes visitors to his Web site for sexy paid chats. Kyle belongs to a stable of mostly runaway street kids who live in a house under the cold, watchful eye of Harvey (the fashion designer Marc Jacobs).
The saddest story of the three involves Rich and Lydia (Jason Bateman and Hope Davis), whose withdrawn, musically talented 15-year-old son, Ben (Jonah Bobo), is duped online. For sport, two high school classmates affecting a bogus female persona entice him to send an embarrassing picture of himself, which they gleefully pass around. Ben, mortified, hangs himself in his bedroom and winds up in a hospital, near death.
Rich, a big-shot lawyer who remains glued to his cellphone even during dinner, tries to track down the bullies and discovers the degree to which the Internet has become an almost impenetrable labyrinth. One of the two classmates, now conscience-stricken, visits Ben’s hospital room under an assumed name and meets Rich.
In the least compelling tale, Derek (Alexander Skarsgard), a former Marine, and his wife, Cindy (Paula Patton), are struggling to salvage their marriage after their baby’s death when they discover that their accounts have been cleaned out. Cindy’s credit card information may have been stolen while she was chatting online with a grief support group. Determined to find the thieves, Derek tracks down a suspect (Michael Nyqvist) who runs a dry-cleaning operation, but the scheme is much more complicated than he could have imagined.
The connections among the characters aren’t just digital. Rich is a higher-up at Nina’s TV station. The father of one of the school bullies (Frank Grillo) is a widowed former police investigator for a computer crimes unit.
The three stories converge melodramatically in the movie’s final minutes. The tightness with which the strands are drawn makes “Disconnect” unsettling to watch as its characters and vignettes jostle one another like riders in a jammed subway car. The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
It is useful to remember how television was once routinely blamed for devouring people’s attention and destroying communication. You don’t hear the term “boob tube” much anymore. I suspect that similar alarms raised about the dangers of texting will eventually subside. What really matters is that whether the platform is television or the Internet, our technology is only as good or evil as the uses we put it to.
The jittery characters who scuttle through the three stories that make up “Disconnect” are struggling to make their way through today’s treacherous cyberwilderness. Some are predators, others prey. Naïve travelers who venture into territory taken over by upstart tribes of technological outlaws risk being ambushed, fleeced and humiliated. Law enforcement is often helpless to catch up with tricksters adept at staying ahead of the game.
How the movie, directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (the documentary “Murderball”) from a screenplay by Andrew Stern, will be received probably depends on the age and digital sophistication of the viewer. Those proficient with Facebook, Twitter, Skype, webcams and smartphones may find “Disconnect” too obvious and blithely dismiss its alarmist attitude as fuddy-duddy. And moviegoers weary of the schematic everything-is-connected school of films like “Crash,” “Babel” and “Short Cuts” may blanch at the recycling of the convention, even though this film’s theme is connectivity and its discontents.
But those struggling to keep up with changing technology may shudder at the portrayal of cruelty unleashed by bullies and thieves who blithely hide behind disguises, dig up personal information with a few keystrokes and destroy people.
The juiciest of the stories involves Nina (Andrea Riseborough), an attractive, ambitious television reporter for a local station in a New York suburb. Her investigation of chat sites involving underage teenagers is widely praised but then backfires after her journalistic coup comes to the attention of the F.B.I., and she is pressed to reveal her source.
Nina suddenly faces the prospect of having to betray Kyle (Max Thieriot), a saucy teenage exhibitionist who calls her a puma (the step before a cougar) and coaxes visitors to his Web site for sexy paid chats. Kyle belongs to a stable of mostly runaway street kids who live in a house under the cold, watchful eye of Harvey (the fashion designer Marc Jacobs).
The saddest story of the three involves Rich and Lydia (Jason Bateman and Hope Davis), whose withdrawn, musically talented 15-year-old son, Ben (Jonah Bobo), is duped online. For sport, two high school classmates affecting a bogus female persona entice him to send an embarrassing picture of himself, which they gleefully pass around. Ben, mortified, hangs himself in his bedroom and winds up in a hospital, near death.
Rich, a big-shot lawyer who remains glued to his cellphone even during dinner, tries to track down the bullies and discovers the degree to which the Internet has become an almost impenetrable labyrinth. One of the two classmates, now conscience-stricken, visits Ben’s hospital room under an assumed name and meets Rich.
In the least compelling tale, Derek (Alexander Skarsgard), a former Marine, and his wife, Cindy (Paula Patton), are struggling to salvage their marriage after their baby’s death when they discover that their accounts have been cleaned out. Cindy’s credit card information may have been stolen while she was chatting online with a grief support group. Determined to find the thieves, Derek tracks down a suspect (Michael Nyqvist) who runs a dry-cleaning operation, but the scheme is much more complicated than he could have imagined.
The connections among the characters aren’t just digital. Rich is a higher-up at Nina’s TV station. The father of one of the school bullies (Frank Grillo) is a widowed former police investigator for a computer crimes unit.
The three stories converge melodramatically in the movie’s final minutes. The tightness with which the strands are drawn makes “Disconnect” unsettling to watch as its characters and vignettes jostle one another like riders in a jammed subway car. The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
It is useful to remember how television was once routinely blamed for devouring people’s attention and destroying communication. You don’t hear the term “boob tube” much anymore. I suspect that similar alarms raised about the dangers of texting will eventually subside. What really matters is that whether the platform is television or the Internet, our technology is only as good or evil as the uses we put it to.
