Sphere

Sphere

Last film was non-serious Hoffman and in this we have serious Hoffman.

Plot:

A group of people go to the bottom of the ocean to investigate a crashed spaceship.

 

Review:

 

This is probably the single most interesting "mind boggling" film that has such mainstream hollywood actors in it.

Initial scene shows Psychologist Norman Goodman (Hoffman) being flown out to sea for an alleged airplane crash. What supposedly was an airplane is actually a spaceship thats been buried at the bottom of the ocean for 300 years. All of this is revealed to him by a military seargent named Barnes. Having written an acclaimed report on the subject of ufo's and how to to deal with such a scenario, Norman is the militaries go-to guy in this situation. What kind of people that would form the contact team is specified in the report and Norman therefore ends up meeting a biochemist named Beth Halperin (Stone), astrophysicist Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber) and the mathematician Harry Adams (Jackson). All these people however have had some sort of relation to Norman beforehand.

Takes an unexpected turn around the middle of the film which I think is a fine one although I wouldn't really mind if they would have stayed with the initial direction which basically was about how a meeting with alien intelligence would turn out. The changing in pace and nerve was still quite welcome.

Having been a while since I've seen this, actually back in the VHS days, I do know that films tend to seem "old" really fast. Films made in the 90's are comparatively filled with what is "now" known as clichees and the general theme of the film may have been done alot of times which makes it predictable. I do find Sphere to stand the test of time, however.

 

Trailer:

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