Sphere
Starring:
Dustin
Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote.
Running
time: 134 minutes
Year:
1998
Directed
By: Barry
Levinson
Written
By: Stephen
Hauser & Paul Attanasio
Sphere
is another film adapted from author Michael Crichton. His previous novels that
have turned into films are Jurassic Park,
Disclosure and The Lost World. Sphere would sit somewhere in the middle
of the films in terms of watching a good film. Granted Jurassic Park would be the best, but the other three would be
depending on what mood I was in at the time.
Sphere
has a decent premise, but also one that we have all seen before. It begins with
a psychologist Norman Goodman (Hoffman) being flown out to sea for a so-called
airplane crash. However when he gets there he is greeted by military sergeant
Barnes (Coyote), who informs him that it isn't an airplane but a spaceship that
has been buried in the coral of the sea for three hundred years. Norman has
been brought on board after a report he wrote years ago regarding the
possibility and what to do upon meeting an alien being. This report was taken
seriously and the military are using it as their bible, so they felt it was
necessary to bring the people Norman recommended in his report to be part of a
first contact team. This team are biochemist Beth Halperin (Stone), mathematician
Harry Adams (Jackson) and astrophysicist Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber), all
people Norman has known from the past through being patients, students or
lovers. Hint Stone was his lover he was not homosexual.
The crew are sent out to the depths of the ocean to
investigate this space craft, but it turns out that Norman has no idea what he
should be doing as in fact his report was a fake and he simply added the names
of people he knew. It was a job he couldn't turn down as it was worth a lot of money.
Upon telling a few of the team it becomes aware to him that he will have to
wing his way through this expedition and get himself back up to the surface as
fast as he can.
The team enter the spaceship and upon exploring they
realise that it is an American spaceship and the only conclusion is that it was
in space collecting alien artefacts and was sucked into a black hole,
propelling them into the past. It is a ship from the future. Also on board is a
giant, gold sphere; the artefact that the astronauts' brought back from space.
As they begin to investigate the sphere they realise that it has a strange
effect on them all and their worst fears begin to come to life. To make matters
worse a storm has begun on the surface and it is unsafe for them to resurface
so they are stuck, a thousand feet below the sea facing an alien sphere that
can manifest their greatest fears.
The film probably sounds a lot more interesting than
it actually is. I was quite interested in it and the first half of the film
really had me hooked and I was intrigued into what was going on. Unfortunately
though the film suddenly descended into predictability and stupidity. The
entire script wasn't great but the second half was as if someone new entirely
had written it. I was suddenly frustrated at it as we had repetitive lines
between the leads as they accused the others of going in the sphere. It was
overlong and should have been nipped in the bud a lot earlier. Also the ending
is such a copout it is frustrating. I was expecting a nice twist ending to wrap
up the poor second half but it never happened, and what we got was a cheesy,
poor CGI mess. After a strong start the film really did nose dive.
The acting is erratic. I can't really decide if it
was good or not. At some points I thought yes and at others I was completely
negative. Stone doesn't have the most interesting character or performance,
considering she has an interesting back story that never really gets explored.
Jackson starts poor, gets better, than has three, maybe four changes of
character and then returns to poor and Hoffman seemed to want to do more but
couldn't. All I could see was his character from Rain Man and I was surprised when he spoke normally. The acting
front seemed very lethargic and it was as if they were trying to make sense of
the plot in the second half as much as we were.
I did enjoy the first half of the film, but it
completely lost me in the second half and I'm a little disappointed at the end
product. By all accounts Hoffman himself believed that the film wasn't
delivered at its full potential when it was released and criticised it for
this. Dustin, I can see where you are coming from. It was an alright film that
plummeted quickly, but if it had kept up with the suspense from the first half
it could have been an even better watch. Oh and don't worry I was also
frustrated by the chapter headings that came up every now and again. Something
that was very unneeded.
2.5
/ 5
Tolli
Next film to review: 300
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