What is true is that I like movies (I actually LOVE cinematography and absolutely am what they used to call me back in the States: “a movie buff”), but I think the review of this movie in this blog fits perfectly since nets are interesting elements of it at more than one level.

So let’s roll but BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD!:

The movie itself is a poorly written action flick which is made disturbing in many moments because of the particular style (much almost-still slow-motion and a fetish for vibrating human flesh and superabundant skin above all) of the Kazakh director Timur Benkmambetov (a Borat fellow citizen).

In the movie the story is based upon the fact that there is a Confraternity of Assasins (I don’t know if this is the actual english term in the movie, here in Italy we have the habit of giving foreign actors better voices) who get their orders from a loom which makes discrete errors in the fabric it produces which are then decodified making them correspond to a binary code (no need to understand that, its just bovine stool). The “moral alibi” the mentor gives for getting orders by a piece of linen is that the fabric represents the connections of all the people and the message about the victim and the consequential elimitation is a necessity inside Fate evolution.

This is the first part which I consider interesting related to Networks: in this movie the existence of each one of us is seen as the least part of a huge Net Work which can bee perfectly represented as an infinite textile work. Its interesting to see how this idea can be at the basis of diametrically different ideological doctrines like for example Socialism, Communism (the individual can just be seen as part of the community) and, opposite to them Individualism (we make our part in the society by being always a strong and self-enhancing individual, like the thread, just interacting occasionally with the others).

In the movie it is said that being the one who can read this aspect of reality and being able to act according to this knowledge makes you superior to all humans.

Another network the screenwriter of this movie should have been more aware of is the Script. As a text (word which is just one with textile in Latin, precisely textum, since language is just a network of meanings and symbols) the script should always be seen as a game of correspondences and recalls which has to interact effectively with an external element, the Viewer.

This approach lacks totally since it is full of dialogue bloopers (the girlfriend says he is missing since 2 months, he tells us he entered the Confraternity since 6 weeks), some shooting bloopers and really too many simplifications.

So this is my review, from a networks enthusiast point of view, a 6 out of 10 on IMDB, due also to some fascist ideas that lately seem to permeate many Hollywood works. I’d really appreciate to read your comments.