Chrysalis is a French sci-fi thriller I picked up cheap on Amazon whilst randomly browsing and it appealed to me in a way many Matrixesque films do but with the added bonus of being French and cheap which tipped the balance for actually making the purchase (though the film turned out not to be a Matrix clone at all).
The first thing that stands out about this film is the near constant use of a grey filter in the now seemingly mandatory style required by action led dystopian future visions ala Equilibrium. It is an effect I quite like in moderation but it was too much even for me.
The plot involves criminal gangs, shady business dealings, government intelligence agencies and a street fighting, maverick cop who just won’t give up on his case. Oh yeah, and mind altering, memory storing machines in a future Paris. The sci-fi input therefore is really more of a maguffin, though obviously memory altering does play a major part.
The film is quite stylish though not particularly high budget and on the whole the story moves along reasonably quickly with fairly obvious twists and turns. Bonus points are earned by the very impressive hand to hand fight scenes, which are some of the best “believable” action I’ve seen in a long time. On the downside there are minor sub-plots that don’t seem to be answered and I was left with a feeling of not quite having understood what was happening. The weird memory flashback edits also confused me as they showed some stuff that was still to happen as well as memory, but no mention of seeing the future was made.
On the whole this is a fairly good film that perhaps aimed a little too high and failed to achieve all that it intended but overall its successes outweigh its faults.
