Hacker Garrett Hedlund (above, right) winds up in a futuristic motorcycle battle in a parallel universe while searching for his missing dad. (
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How to describe the visual scintillation that is “Tron: Legacy”? Ninja Vegas? Black Mass at Best Buy? Mummenschanz Goes Electric Boogaloo?
Whatever. The sequel to 1982’s “Tron” is an eyeball party. The score by Daft Punk, which veers from homages to Hans Zimmer’s thundery work in “The Dark Knight” to a retro-’80s synth sound, surpasses magnificence. Many were the moments, during action scenes, when I (nearly) shed my customary phlegmatic equilibrium and (almost) thought: Hey, this is really exciting!
As for the script: abort, retry, fail?
Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund, who desperately wants to be Harrison Ford but makes you long for Chris Pine) is a genius hacker. His annual hobby is pranking the tech company that, thanks to his father’s disappearance 20 years ago, he mostly owns.
Dad Kevin (Jeff Bridges, who does a lot to hold things together) once told the lad that he was about to tap into the Secret of Everything. (Maybe he wound up running Stark Industries and getting smoked by Iron Man?)
Sam lost his mom too, but any tragic foundations for this li’l Bruce Wayne are discarded in favor of Hedlund’s smirking and some of the worst one-liners known to any universe, real or simulated. Sam avers that his dad is “either dead or chillin’ in Costa Rica. Probably both.” Moments of mortal peril are undercut by idiot-speak like, “This can’t be good” and “I know you probably get this a lot, but there’s been a mistake.” What daft punk wrote the instantly outdated line, “Ice caps are melting, war in the Middle East, Lakers-Celtics back at it”? Would-be Christopher Nolans (“T:L” is directed by 36-year-old rookie Joseph Kosinski) should note that one big reason Nolan’s work seems more grown-up than the competition is that he leaves out the 10th grade-isms.
On his dad’s trail, Sam plunges into a parallel cyber-universe where his father is still alive, though a virtual prisoner in a matrix run by his evil twin Clu, an insidious program played by a digitally re-created 1980s Jeff Bridges who looks like a product of Madame Tussauds CGI Museum.
Bridges’ uncanny rubber-ducky skin detracts from the malevolence of the villain. But in five years they’ll have the digi-Botox mastered. This conjures exciting visions of graying stars once again toplining franchise pictures — with corresponding unemployment for the Garrett Hedlunds.
I was thoroughly bedazzled by the digital grid, even though I had questions (it’s unclear what the gizmos can do and what the physical rules of the space are). Immediately upon arrival, Sam gets in a spiffy gladiatorial stadium death match involving buzz-saw e-Frisbees that zing off the walls like air-hockey pucks.
Soon everyone’s on flashy face-first “Dark Knight” motorcycles — which mainly seem to give racers a way to zoom up and punch each other in the face. Later there will be an awesome bar fight involving Sam and his cybergirl protector (Olivia Wilde). The emcee for this segment is a fey fixer played by Michael Sheen (“Libations for everybody!”). Picture David Bowie’s Thin White Duke with an electronic cane that shoots laser bullets. This is followed by a sensational dogfight in which the fighters streak the inky cyber-sky with their colorblock exhaust plumes.
I couldn’t figure out why cyberspace was so windy, though. I guess Bridges’ black “Matrix” coat simply must rustle defiantly in the fierce apocalyptic breeze. Also: The character Tron, a cyber-buddy of Kevin’s, barely appears in the film.
I quibble. For all of its buggy storytelling, “Tron: Legacy” plugs into your cerebral cortex and makes it sizzle. Its orders come straight from Sheen’s character when he cries out, in a party-starting moment: “Electrify the boys and girls, if you would be so kind.”