Cypher is Vincenzo Natali's classy portrayal of the multi-layered world of high-level corporate espionage, which follows an out of work accountant named Morgan Sullivan (played very well by British actor Jeremy Northam - Emma, Amistad, The Winslow Boy) who trades in his completely drab existence for the opportunity to spy for multinational corporations against their competitors.
Sullivan reminds me of a much quieter and far less neurotic version of the Ira Goldstein character from the ASB Bank TV commercials. Despite his reserved and seemingly honest demeanour, he undergoes a whole range of psychological profiling tests to ensure he won't be spotted by the competition - as these corporations are all spying on each other, they are correspondingly paranoid of being spied upon. Only after he passes the tests multiple times, he is then given a couple of low-level field assignments to see if he can deliver the goods.
Sullivan is given a new fake identity and is allowed to embellish it however he chooses. As a bit of a nerd, he doesn't quite pull off a dashing, "babes and bombs" James Bond type of spy and so opts instead for a more confident and cool reinvention of himself. Almost immediately, his path crosses with Rita (Lucy Liu - Charlie's Angels, Alley McBeal) - a sexy and mysterious femme fatale. The setting for most of the spying seems to be mind-numbingly banal industry and product conventions held all over the country, yet Rita seems to know a lot more about what is going on than Sullivan, who soon discovers he is but a pawn in the game.
Start paying attention when Sullivan's double-agent stint begins, because a lapse of concentration at this point may find you sitting bewildered about an hour later as the cinema lights come back on, wondering what just happened.
Well, it's not quite that bad, but the complex, multi-layered, psychological Matrix-like (i.e. "what is real?") plot is something which gives the film its stylish flavour. It's perhaps like The Bourne Identity on Valium. When I think about it, Cypher did have a few stunts here and there, but these tended to be subsumed into the sedate plot, rendering them unmemorable.
The filmmakers used a slightly unusual technique of scanning the actual film footage to digital video and transferring it back to film negative, which increases the richness and range of colours available to them. This in turns provides a heightened sense of reality for Sullivan's alter-ego which is paralleled by Northam's acting and screen presence; you are watching the same actor but see two entirely different people (depending on whether he is boring Sullivan, or suave spy guy).
Natali directed the 1997 sci-fi thriller Cube, but where that film was contained in the same location (i.e. the deadly Cube maze), almost every scene in Cypher is in a different setting - all very classily shot and edited. Yet the film still manages to have a sense of claustrophobic unease - you have a niggling feeling that Sullivan is trapped somehow no matter how into his spy role he gets, but never quite find out how until the end.
Cypher is a good watch and seemed much longer than its 90 or so minutes; perhaps from the slow pace of the plot or the general mind games that are going on everywhere.
Cypher is Vincenzo Natali's classy portrayal of the multi-layered world of high-level corporate espionage, which follows an out of work accountant named Morgan Sullivan (played very well by British actor Jeremy Northam - Emma, Amistad, The Winslow Boy) who trades in his completely drab existence for the opportunity to spy for multinational corporations against their competitors.