"Bio-digital Jazz, man"
So says Jeff Bridges character, in one of several quoteworthy lines from this bombastic yet endearing update on the Disney video game classic of 1982.
Indeed, its one of the wonders of this near 30 year update that Bridges and Co. can get away with expressions like that without coming off as either contrived or condescending.
Kevin Flynn (Bridges), the protagonist of the earlier Tron, has spent the last umpteen years in the video game grid, building up a nice So-Cal style pad for himself and doing research. When he comes across something called isomorphic algorithms" (ISOs), self-produced programs that carried the potential to unlock mysteries in science, religion, and medicine, its his "Eureka!" moment, but it doesn't last. Former colleague Clu (Bridges again) betrayed him, killed Tron and destroyed the ISOs which he considered an imperfection. When the portal to the game grid closed, Flynn became a captive inside his own creation.
Enter Sam (Garrett Hedlund). Flynn's son and heir to his company ENCOM, only Sam prefers motorcycling and occasionally hacking into the company's systems to show up the now corrupt board members to actual work. That is, until a message summons him back to his father's old "office" and "inadvertently" into the grid.
That sets of the action quotient of the film, with some entertaining gladiatorial contests between Sam and the "programs" resident in the grid. Spotted, he's taken to Clu who, (if you couldn't guess) was the one behind the summons in the first place.
It also brings him to the love interest, Quorra (Olivia Wilde) who rescues him from near death in a match against Clu, takes him into some "off-grid" territory known as the Outlands and reunites him with his father.
Cliched as all this sounds, in the hands of feature film directing debutante Josef Kosinki, TV script-writing veteran Adam Horowitz , cinematographer Claudio Miranda and the cast, this Tron has a sheen and zip all its own, and moves along at a much brisker pace than its 125-minute running time would suggest.
By the time of the climactic confrontation between Clu and the Flynns, the audience feels it has been told and shown enough but is still relishing the illuminated points along the journey.
Tron Legacy is a movie about the interactions between humans and technology that retains a palpable humanity without feeling hokey.
Indeed, its one of the wonders of this near 30 year update that Bridges and Co. can get away with expressions like that without coming off as either contrived or condescending.
Kevin Flynn (Bridges), the protagonist of the earlier Tron, has spent the last umpteen years in the video game grid, building up a nice So-Cal style pad for himself and doing research. When he comes across something called isomorphic algorithms" (ISOs), self-produced programs that carried the potential to unlock mysteries in science, religion, and medicine, its his "Eureka!" moment, but it doesn't last. Former colleague Clu (Bridges again) betrayed him, killed Tron and destroyed the ISOs which he considered an imperfection. When the portal to the game grid closed, Flynn became a captive inside his own creation.
Enter Sam (Garrett Hedlund). Flynn's son and heir to his company ENCOM, only Sam prefers motorcycling and occasionally hacking into the company's systems to show up the now corrupt board members to actual work. That is, until a message summons him back to his father's old "office" and "inadvertently" into the grid.
That sets of the action quotient of the film, with some entertaining gladiatorial contests between Sam and the "programs" resident in the grid. Spotted, he's taken to Clu who, (if you couldn't guess) was the one behind the summons in the first place.
It also brings him to the love interest, Quorra (Olivia Wilde) who rescues him from near death in a match against Clu, takes him into some "off-grid" territory known as the Outlands and reunites him with his father.
Cliched as all this sounds, in the hands of feature film directing debutante Josef Kosinki, TV script-writing veteran Adam Horowitz , cinematographer Claudio Miranda and the cast, this Tron has a sheen and zip all its own, and moves along at a much brisker pace than its 125-minute running time would suggest.
By the time of the climactic confrontation between Clu and the Flynns, the audience feels it has been told and shown enough but is still relishing the illuminated points along the journey.
Tron Legacy is a movie about the interactions between humans and technology that retains a palpable humanity without feeling hokey.
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