Sphere - The Movie Reviewed by Neil Shipman Following the success of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, Michael Crichton's stock in Tinseltown is predictably high. Add to this the current rage for alien contact scenarios on film and TV (Contact, Event Horizon, X-Files etc) and what Hollywood studio mogul is going to turn down the possibility of bringing Crichton's 1987 novel, Sphere, to the big screen? The all-star cast includes Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schreiber and Peter Coyote and the movie is directed by Barry Levinson. Place these five actors in claustrophobic isolation, add a dash of the unknown and mix with suitable special effects and you would expect the performances to be gripping and the movie exciting, entertaining and interesting. However, the feelings of fear and paranoia which affect them all end up being swamped by circular explanations and impenetrable dialogue and, after the first hour, the film degenerates into action adventure at the expense of maintaining a coherent and believable storyline. Hoffman's character, Norman, is a psychologist who, a few years previously, has scammed a paper (quoting Asimov and Serling in the process!) for the U.S. Government on who should comprise a team to make initial human contact with ULFs - unknown life forms or, as we all know them, aliens! When a crashed spacecraft is discovered embedded in coral at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean the individuals whom he has recommended are brought together and an anomaly investigation team is formed. It includes Norman's onetime student and lover, Beth (Sharon Stone), a zoologist and biochemist; Harry (Samuel L. Jackson), a brilliant mathematician and logician; Ted (Liev Schreiber), an astrophysicist and planetary biologist; and Barnes (Peter Coyote), the U.S. Navy project commander. To begin with, the anticipation of what the team will find 1000 feet below the surface heightens the interest. However, the descent to the temporary base on the ocean floor fails to build on this and the obvious use of models for the submersibles and the habitat is a further detraction from believability. Once inside the spaceship it becomes apparent that this is a craft which has been made in the U.S. and, apparently, comes from the future. Suddenly we are bombarded with a plethora of ideas about time travel, black holes and so on. But the film concentrates on what's inside the spaceship - a shimmering, seamless, golden sphere which, the team surmise, has been captured by the craft during its voyage to the past. This alien entity - which likes to be known as Jerry - communicates with the team via the computer monitors on the habitat. Jerry, childlike in his emotions, is happy and wants to talk. But, as Norman says, 'What happens when Jerry gets mad?' What power does this unknown life form command? Each person who enters the sphere is, unwittingly, given the power to manifest their thoughts and emotions - and the predominant emotion is fear. As Norman has noted in his original paper, 'The most likely consequence of contact is absolute terror.' Giant squid, jellyfish, sea snakes and strange undersea eggs are some of the terrors faced by the team. And these are more than just hallucinations. These manifestations are so real they can and do kill people. Initially unaware of the source of these creatures, the characters combat them as best they can but, all the while, the fear increases, Jerry becomes murderous in his intentions and the paranoia builds as no-one trusts anyone else. Levinson relies on quick cuts and edgy camera moves to crank up the tension, the action is well directed and acted, and the predominant colours of green, blue and black add to the claustrophobic feeling of being cooped up in a tin can 1000 feet below a raging Pacific storm. However, Levinson is no James Cameron, whose undersea action in The Abyss is probably the best ever to come out of Hollywood, and it shows. At 132 minutes, the film is too long and fails to sustain one's interest. The characterisation is rather thin and it is difficult to identify with any of the cast or ultimately care about what happens to them as they wrestle with the products of their imaginings. And the ending - in the book and the film - is something of a cop out, leaving one with a sense of anticlimax. Confronting our human weaknesses and fears by making them real has been dealt with much more effectively in novels and on film. Indeed, both Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Solaris, and Stanislaw Lem's classic book on which it was based are significantly more thought-provoking, disturbing and entertaining. Sphere could have been a serious exploration of alien contact, a sci-fi based action adventure or a tense psychological thriller. It tries to be all of these and, predictably, ends up being none. ------------------ In Frobs We Trust! ------------------ - o -