He’s by himself, no lawyer, looking over at a table of five suits (including Ritchson as “Agent Carver”) who are accusing him, but he’s being real casual about it, kicking his feet up on the table and making jokes about them having “penis envy” and stuff. ![]() It starts right in the middle of something, the main character Connor (Jack Kesy, DEATH WISH, WITHOUT REMORSE) in a mansion trying to break into someone’s computer, but he’s sardonically narrating the story, and then there’s an explosion and a show-offy FX shot where the camera rotates around the flames and follows him in a slow motion Hans Grueber fall with sparks and debris floating past him, and when he hits the lawn the title comes up (filled with TV snow, scanlines and tracking lines), and then we’re in the top secret United States Foreign Surveillance Court, where he’s telling this story to a panel of judges to defend himself from charges of high treason, espionage, terrorism and murder. If you’re expecting what’s on that cover, the actual energy and tone of the movie are immediately surprising. This movie imagines one explanation and follows some characters trying to solve the puzzles. ![]() Rumors grew that they were a recruiting tool for an intelligence agency, a hacker group, or a secret society. Wikipedia says that “the puzzles focused heavily on data security, cryptography, steganography, and internet anonymity,” whatever that means. I guess these very difficult puzzles were posted between 20, claiming to be designed to find “highly intelligent individuals” for some unknown purpose, and only 2 of the 3 have ever been solved. It sounds like the corniest name ever if you don’t know “Cicada 3301” is a mysterious internet puzzle thing that’s famous as far as mysterious internet puzzles things go. The marketing team might’ve been counting on people knowing what the title referred to, which I did not. The cover really doesn’t capture the feel of the thing, which is very smart alecky, though more of a thriller with a sense of humor than an all-out comedy. It’s not a great movie, but it’s an interesting one. I had to know what kind of a movie Reacher would direct, so I watched it. That’s right, Reacher himself, from the TV show Reacher. But when I was working on my review of FAST X I noticed it on the filmography of Alan Ritchson – he’s not only in it as an actor, but he directed and co-wrote it. I assumed it was some generic shitty hacker thriller, so I paid it no mind. ![]() I know I’d seen the cover for the 2021 film DARK WEB: CICADA 3301 before.
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