Disconnect (Rhoades)

“Disconnect”

Seeks to Connect

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

In this online age of Wikileaks, Anonymous, spammers, phishers, and hackers, the World Wide Web has become a dangerous place. A new drama called “Disconnect” tells you about it -- from identity theft to bullying to steamy sex sites.

Technology can be your enemy as well as your friend. Here are interwoven stories about people whose life are impacted by events that take place in cyberspace.

Andrea Riseborough plays an ambitious journalist out to make a name for herself by interviewing a teen who performs on an adult-only website. Jason Bateman is a widowed cop who discovers that his son has become a cyber-bully. Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton are a couple whose bank account registers zero after online bandits steal their identities. No secret is safe from hackers.

“Disconnect” -- now playing at the Tropic Cinema -- is billed as a thriller, but much of the action takes place on a computer screen.

Oscar-nominated director Henry-Alex Rubin (“Murderball”) takes you on a journey through cyberspace, exploring its darker sides. “You can easily pitch this movie badly and have people roll their eyes and say, ‘I don’t want to watch a movie about technology and how it’s bad,’” he acknowledges. “But technology is completely neutral. It is absurd to say its good or bad. Technology has put men on the moon and it has created the H-Bomb. It’s in our hands.”

I’d tell you more about this movie, but I think someone just stole my password to IMDbPro, the online source than many movie critics rely on for casting details and film credits. Oh no!

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