3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Checking out Julie Benz? That would be the reason to watch, March 5, 2005
This review is from: Dark Drive (DVD)
I checked out this movie because I heard it had Julie Benz in it and I wanted to see her (just take that statement at face value for now). Like many others, I am a big fan of the work she did on "Angel" once her character of Darla, killed off in the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was brought back. I consider her scene in the show's third season, where she give birth to her son by staking herself to be the high point of the five season run of "Angel" (people who have never seen the show and would never bother to watch it were impressed by my description of that remarkable scene). But the only thing "Darkdrive" has in common with "Angel" is that Julie Benz has her best scenes after her character is dead.
There is a lot of confusion over what happens in this movie. Not debate, because that would have people talking about it and trying to reach conclusions through dialectical engagement through argumentation, and most viewers are just throwing up their hands on this one and giving up on figuring it out. My understanding of what is going on is this: in the future criminals are sent to a virtual reality to serve their sentences. Then the system crashes and the government sends Steven Falcon (Ken Olandt) into the system to fix it. Why he needs to go IN to the system as opposed to sitting at a keyboard and working on code or something seems motivated less by the logic of problem solving and more from the desire to be like "The Matrix." Once there, Falcon has to deal with R.J. Tilda (Claire Stansfield), a criminal he sent into the system before the crash, and who is out to get him. As I see it, Tilda is probably the one who figured out the system from the inside to use it to kill Flacon's wife, Julie (Benz).
Mourning for his wife, Falcon tries to use the system to create a cyber-version, but it proves unsatisfying to him. However, once he is in the system he discovers that Julie is "alive." In the system once you die you can be essentially rebooted. Do not think this is a plot point with existentialist overtones, because it is just a way of setting up pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the end. I am pretty sure the pivotal point here is that there is more than one way to get into this particular matrix, um, system. One is by sitting in the magic chair and the other is being abducted by the system's "transporter" device (the kid at the end is the one that disappears early on, because the same thing happened to both her and Julie). I can go along with the idea that Benz is the best thing in this movie, but given her limited role and small amount of screen time, this is not a good thing.
Even from the torturous description of the premise of "Dark Drive," a 1996 film directed by Phillip J. Roth, you can probably tell that the most interesting part of the story is not "The Matrix" ripoffs but the idea of cyber prisons. That is an idea worth exploring without having the system fall apart in something akin to a more extended stay in the NYC prison of "Escape From New York." But Roth has directed "Digital Man" and "Total Reality," so the computer trip is going to be his primary interest. But then I showed up to check out Julie Benz so it is hard for me to complain about a director being myopic without engaging in that whole thing about the pot and the kettle.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What?, April 24, 2009
Honestly, I am still trying to work out the plot. Something about an energy vortex, then an evil woman, then a dead woman, and a husband finding her, then an evil woman, a little girl, and then an "I see dead people" moment where I think everything is supposed to come together and it doesn't. Yeah, it was pretty confusing.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A just alright movie, January 15, 2012
This review is from: Dark Drive (DVD)
The movie itself really isnt that great but the reason I picked it up is because Julie Benz is in the movie. I am a big fan of Dexter and she is in that show as well. I would not have bought this movie if she was not in it.
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