MAX THIERIOT IN DISCONNECT*

Trouble online leads to reconciliation off

Disconnect, directed by Henry Alex Rubin, follows the pattern of Magnolia, Babel, or Crash, but with a lighter case load, only three stories. But there's one big target: all this is the fault of the Internet. And who can deny that the Web is a great medium for indiscretion, wasted time, and having one's identity stolen? But while the title promises a discourse on alienation, writer Andrew Stern only maintains this focus for the first anxious minutes, after which he switches to meatier topics like betrayal, violation, and robbery. If we are online or on our smart phones all the time, we're "disconnected." But is cyberspace really to blame for sex exploitation, love cheating, or inappropriate snapshots? Isn't it just a new medium for that old stuff? However engrossing Disconnect may be, it still reads like a cheap knockoff of those more epic omnibus dramas. And given the smaller scale, Rubin would have done better to stop for the occasional laugh or let his movie breathe once in a while. This movie takes itself way too seriously.

Young male hottie Kyle (Max Thieriot) sells himself for online-only sex to TV journalist Nina Durham (Andrea Riseborough), who interviews him for CNN, causing mayhem in his life and that of the dicey businessman he and his colleagues work for. Neglected wife Cindy Hull (Paula Patton) trades complaints about her cold marriage with a lonely husband who goes by the online moniker of "fear and loathing" (Michael Nyqvist). Then she and ex-Marine husband Derek (Alexander Skarsgård) learn their identities have been stolen and their bank accounts emptied. Lonely emo highschooler Ben Boyd (Jonah Bobo) gets lured into a fake chatline romance by malevolent classmates and the school scandal destroys his fragile ego.

These three situations, several of which are intertwined, lead to disaster, but also to reconciliation. Despite all the bad taste and annoyance the Internet has encouraged, amusingly categorized in a run-through of Disconnect's trailer in the Guardian, the movie never develops its "disconnect" idea. It shows the opportunities for larceny, deception, and betrayal are as ample online as they ever were off, but in its stories the people seem to be very connected, perhaps more connected than ever.

Some of the acting here is quite good. In particular there's a fine opportunity for three young actors, Thieriot, Bobo, and Colin Ford, playing Jason Dixon, the boy who ruins Ben Boyd's life by pretending online to be a girl named "Jessica Rohny." There are some memorable contrasts of distant fathers -- and acting styles. Ben Boyd's father Rich (amiable everyman Jason Bateman) is a busy lawyer -- too busy. Jason Dixon's dad, Mike (Frank Grillo) is a hard-nosed ex-cop -- too hard-nosed -- specializing in computer fraud, so he winds up working with Cindy and Derek Hull. Unknowingly, Boyd and Jason have been able to share online their discontent with their dads. As the three crises heat up, each of them in the nature of a chase or a whodunit, there are multiple confrontations, and they all happen simultaneously, even with a slow-motion fight. Thieriot and the excellent British actress Riesborough get some good time together; so do Skarsgård and Patton, for a bit, as the alienated couple drawn back together by disaster. Colin Ford gets some intense moments of contrition.

But Rubin is no Iñárritu or P.T. Anderson. The resonance of these stories is limited and their overlapping is more coincidental than meaningful. The narrative alternations start to feel like channel-surfing after a while, as if we're trying to watch three programs at once because they've all gotten so exciting we don't want to miss one of them. This isn't the best way to experience narrative or drama, on split-screen, and not how those other films play out. Particularly in Magnolia, my favorite of the three, the stories get more of a chance to breathe and feel unique. All sorts of life creeps in in ways not permitted by this more narrowly focused set of tales.

Disconnect, 115 mins., debuted at Toronto in September 2012 and opened in the US 12 April 2012.

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*"Disconnect is the first film to speak the truth about how everyone with internet access – even politicians – now spend most of their lives ogling strangers with terrible interior design instincts online"--Guardian.



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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.