PicturesĪfter Mae disappears, flashbacks to her and Nick’s short-lived romance are interspersed throughout, but these feel much like puzzle pieces: glimpsed early on so that they can fit together more fully later on. “You’re going on a journey, a journey through memory.” Warner Bros. And although two of the most extended scenes between Nick and Mae are seductions, Joy’s script rushes through them before any sexual tension can organically build between the characters. Joy doesn’t give audiences enough time to invest in their romance before Mae disappears, and the few scenes we do get with them prior to that twist lack the kind of romantic spark that would have made their dynamic believable. Jackman and Ferguson do the best they can with what they’re given, but they’re unable to breathe life into Nick and Mae’s relationship. But the main problem with Nick’s search for Mae in Reminiscence isn’t that the film is steeped in genre influences it’s that neither character is compelling. This is not a new story, even with the added element of Nick’s memory technology film noir classics like Laura, Out of the Past, and The Third Man have all followed characters on similar paths. Nick’s quest for answers supplies Reminiscence with most of its drama, as he discovers parts of Mae’s past and personality he never knew about and is forced to question how much of their relationship was real. On a desperate search through his own memories, Nick gradually uncovers clues as to what might have happened to Mae. Equipped with a machine that lets him endlessly re-experience their time together, Nick begins abusing the technology, despite the warnings of his business partner, Watts (Thandiwe Newton). Nick’s life changes when he falls for a nightclub singer, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), who disappears without a trace several months into their seemingly promising relationship. Set in the near future, Reminiscence follows Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a veteran who makes his living by allowing customers to access technology that lets them relive their memories - for a price, of course.
Both the sunken South Beach setting and the concept of a service catering to yesteryear junkies go from intriguing twist to novelty with a depressing rapidity.Rebecca Ferguson and Hugh Jackman in Reminiscence. The soft-boiled pulp dialogue (“You’ve got balls, Bocce-size!”) does no one any favors.
Ferguson makes for a fine femme fatale, even if she eventually gives up trying to color outside the lines of this sketch of a mystery-woman character. There’s a bigger mystery worth solving then the one swirling around the center of this future-shocked neonoir-by-numbers, which is: Why does it feel so D.O.A.? Yes, Jackman feels oddly miscast as the heartbroken white knight poking his nose into all sorts of dirty business, but you can’t place the blame squarely on his broad shoulders. Behind every fortune is a crime, and Joy has fashioned a sort of reverse Chinatown: Where that Seventies classic revolved around water, this 21st century mash-up centers around the rare currency of dry land. Corruption is always a factor in these stories, where a single pulled thread reveals an unraveling blanket of social rot.
the cracked android Clementine, as one of Nick’s regular customers who ends up being peripherally involved in the bigger picture. (Speaking of the premium cable network, the film premieres on HBO Max and opens in theaters on August 20th, because, well, welcome to moviegoing circa 2021.) She’s dotted the cast with some of the show’s MVPs, notably Newton and Angela Sarafyan, a.k.a. The pedigree is strong for this kind of mix here, given that writer-director Lisa Joy is one half of the braintrust behind HBO’s Westworld. Then Nick and Watts are asked to dig through the recorded mind-file of a witness in a drug-related murder from a few years back, and guess who shows up in the cerebral flashback as a supporting player?īy this point, you’ve likely figured out that Reminiscence is one of those movies that has one jaundiced eye on yesterday and the other on a worst-case-scenario tomorrow, a pulp throwback spackled with sci-fi touches to fill in the stylistic blanks. Now he’s spending a lotta time in the memory machine, poring over their romance’s greatest hits. For months, Nick tries to track her down, despite everyone telling him she was no good, that he needs to let it go. She claims that she wants to find her missing keys. A nightclub singer, specializing in torch songs and sultry glares. So of course a dame walks into his office, the one with the mile-long gams and a closet filled with endless gowns from the Jessica Rabbit eveningwear collection and a vibe that screams “Femme Fatale, incoming!” She goes by Mae (Rebecca Ferguson).