The Role For Cell Phones
It was sure to happen eventually, a movie where cell phones feature prominently as the villian. Based on a real-life communications monitoring program of the United States government, “The Echelon Conspiracy” is a movie that visits old science-fiction tropes via the use of the latest technology in telecommunications, the cell phone. Now this idea may be a surplus these days, true, but imagine when the innovation was not presented thus constricting other ideas that go along with it. The cell phones play one of the most essential roles in the movie being the sole form of communication and sometimes, the bad guy.
Actually, cell phones only seem to figure in so prominently at first – it finally turns out (SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT) that it’s a computer controlling everything behind the scense. Actually, technically speaking, it’s the software that’s run amok, software that has somehow accomplished a certain level of awareness.
Two issues of great interest quickly spring to mind: the real-world Echelon program, still so much shrouded in secrecy that the U.S. government still does not verify or refuse its existence, and the curious phenomenon of self-arrangement, or spontaneous order, in nature.
Alas, the film does not address any of these points, really, and by the halfway point of the movie even cell phones take a back seat to the standard Hollywood standbys of car chases and gun fights. This added up the idea of advertising a brand new phone model into society. If the viewers does not have it already then it will be a intriguing sight to see which might end up with them purchasing one. But if they already have it, they will bring about a lot more faith on their phone and provider. But that’s not all, when a cell phone is advertised who else do you think is observing? That’s right, the other companies. Instead of competing why not just buy some to introduce to their customers?
It’s not a bad movie, to be sure; the case is engaging enough considering the material they have to work with, which is your basic action-spy-thriller. And it all commences intriguing enough, opening with a woman mysteriously reading instructions in her mobile handset, to the point of descending into the Washington, D.C. metro’s tracks, where she meets her end – only to have our protagonist strangely receive the same mysterious phone in the mail during the next scene, a phone which, it turns out, gives the most prodigious of instructions concerning apparently random events, from airline crashes to casino jackpots. It’s an exciting premise, but ninety minutes of screentime almost assures that any treatment can only be overly facile.
Want to find out more about cell phones, then visit Ivan DiCelo’s site on how to choose the best cell phones for your needs.
