Megaville Movie Review

Unfairly ignored cyberpunk noir, set in an Orwellian not-too-distant future. Decrepit dictator Daniel J. Travanti dispatches a hitman with a defective memory chip in his head to Megaville, ostensibly to stop the smuggling of the virtual-reality drug “Dream-a-Life.” But there's something fishy about the mission that our brainwashed protagonist isn't being told. Count yourself lucky if you can follow all of the plot in one sitting, but the knowing references to genre faves, from Alphaville to Total Recall and beyond, make this an undiscovered (if downbeat) treat for buffs.

1991 (R) 96m/C Billy Zane, Daniel J. Travanti, J.C. Quinn, Grace Zabriskie, Kristen Cloke, Stefan Gierasch; D: Peter Lehner; W: Peter Lehner; C: Zoltan David; M: Stacy Widelitz. VHS LIV