The Numbers Station

Saw The Numbers Station (thanks, Basil!) It was an interesting spy thriller. It opens with a distinct, James Bond-ish, throwback-y feel of a 60s film. Top cryptography scientists are revealed to be blond bombshells in white cardigans. Helicopter shots track sexy cars driving down sinuous roads into concrete compounds where super-spies pinch secretaries' asses. The film also has two scenes of mutual destruction which again makes me wonder at the age of the script. This is a modern film however (2013) and the film's palette soon gives way to more modern, garishly contrasting colors and jet black silhouettes, as the action moves from cuddly high-tech into claustrophobic showdown.

The plot follows a spy who is getting too old for this shit. He assassinates his mark and then must track down a witness who flees the scene (free movie idea: an assassin must eliminate all witnesses, but every time he tracks down a witness and kills them, two or three new people witness the killing. The film ends with everyone on earth dead. The assassin then realizes that he must live on as a witness to man's inhumanity to man. Directed by Lars Von Trier.) His handlers get wind of his malaise and send him off to babysit the blond bombshell who is an expert at seductively purring numbers into a secret broadcast station. (Bonus points though: of what I heard, they do get the mechanics of a one-time pad completely correct. The computer interface is some riced-to-shit nonsense of course, but the math is correct.) Then the station is compromised and it becomes a survival/shoot-out thing.

The film's villain is pretty horrifying. He's this Hannibal Lecter type who is given to silky-voiced, menacing monologue. He's not very well motivated, but it's not that kind of movie anyway. The movie is not bad. It's got a tiny, manly little heart, and a lot of exciting action. The film is mostly tense. There's some frantic number-scribbling that goes on, but no math to speak of (this is important to me. I had hopes.) It's a silly movie, but fairly brief and never really painfully bad. Frankly, I had the most fun spotting possible tie-ins to my this-film-comes-from-the-60s theory.