Name: Stringer
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 3.6
Cast: Fiona Angus, Danielle Cormack, Josephine Davison

A clever idea that just doesn't come off.

It still happens that the occasional imdb review starts with the assertion that a particular movie is crap. Then the writer wants their $2 and 110 minutes back. This is not a review but a waste of everyone's time. It says nothing specific of the films weaknesses / strengths or of the objective measures used to appraise the film.

And now we come to Stringer. It's crap and I want my $2 and 110 minutes back. (Only joking.) The central idea is actually quite good. A New Zealand newspaper photographer, Jack Stringer, stringer, get it, returns from South America nursing a long scare down his chest and no memory at all as to how it got there. As the story unfolds we discover that Jack has been a test guinea pig, along with a small group of others, who have had animal organs genetically adapted to replace their own organs. It's all part of a secret experimental programme. Unfortunately the success of the genetic adaptation means that diseases that shouldn't be able transmit between species, do and a type of plague is released among humans in New Zealand. It's a clever idea.

The film, director Steve Morrison's first cinematic outing is not very good. (He is a noted director of video clips.) Sometimes the transfer from one medium, 90-second music video, to another, a 110-minute cinematic narrative, isn't easy. The cast are wooden, the script clichéd, the direction clumsy, and sometimes, frankly absent and so it goes. The special effects are at best amateurish. At one point Jack Stringer is tortured with a disco ball. OK, it's not supposed to be a disco ball but a disco ball it is. Oh, and there are Vernier Calipers used in engineering which are used as a piece of medical equipment. On, it goes.

The tough characters yell to confirm their toughness, every women and school girl (awkward) in the movie is in love with Jack, played by Matthew Sunderland, which is extraordinary as at best he is, well, indecisive and weedy. He is memorable in this film for his red jocks. Apart from a hospital issued pair of boxers, he spends an incredible amount of time in the same red jocks. Oh, and there is the absence of shoes. There is no reason why, but he spends most of the film unshod. Trivialities but they quickly add up and become a significant distraction.

It is easy to single out the weird and monitor it for laughs but I'm certain that all involved entered into the enterprise with valid intent. They wanted to make a good movie. Budget may have been the insurmountable issue for them but in any case this is not a good movie on many levels. This is interesting when one considers that New Zealand produced The Quiet Earth, a hands down Sci-Fi classic.

(Where ever I looked, I came up with 2004 as the films release date and no other dates but this pic has a definite 1980s feel. That's a long time to sit on the self.)

The sci-fi genre, short for science fiction, features imaginative and futuristic concepts that are often rooted in scientific principles, technology, and possibilities. These stories delve into "what if" questions and can serve as a platform to address contemporary social, political, and ethical issues by projecting them onto future or alternate settings.

James Earl Jones and David Prowse in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

In this science fiction B movie a photo-journalist, Stringer, returns to New Zealand only to find himself with a mystery chest scare and a plague like infection taking grip of the local community.

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