Disconnect

Disconnect is a story about lives in the era of technology. The internet has
dramtically changed the world. Our lives are better because of it. But for all of its
benefits, theres also something dark and dangerous about the digital world and
how weve all become too dependent to it in our day to day lives. Diretor Henry Alex
Rubin delivers a powerful and dark story about how technology has alienated
marriage, family and friendship instead of connecting people.
In Disconnect, we examine the lives of an ensemble of characters, all loosely
connected through their experiences and identities on the internet.
Cindy (Paula Patton) and Derek (Alexander Skarsgard) are a young couple who are
mourning over the loss of their baby, and their already troubled marriage is further
tested when their identities are stolen on the Internet. When a cyber-detective
(Frank Grillo) confronts them with their Internet histories, the effect is devastating
and also a crucial link in reconnecting them.
Nina (Andrea Riseborough) is an ambitious and cunning television reporter for a
local station who strikes up a webcam conversation with an 18-year-old Internet sex
model, Kyle (Max Thieriot) in the hopes of interviewing him for an expose on the
predators who recruit teen girls and boys to become online porn performers. Her
investigation of chat sites involving underage teenagers is widely praised but then
backfires after her story comes to the attention of the F.B.I., and she is pressed to
reveal her source and faces the prospect of having to betray Kyle.
New York lawyer Rich Boyd (Jason Bateman) and his wife Lydia (Hope Davis) are
raising two teens. Daughter Abby (Haley) is popular, with little patience for her loner
brother, Ben (Jonah Bobo). That makes Ben vulnerable to a nasty cyberprank, in
which two classmates pretend to be a girl liking Ben on Facebook. The tragic result
leads to Rich trying to track down the cyberbullies. Ironically, it's the Internet that
brings him closer to his son, through the music Ben recorded online, and the roots
of the crime.
Jason (Colin Ford) and Frye (Aviad Bernstein) are a couple of highschool classmates
who target freaky
music nerd Ben (Jonah Bobo) for an extended online prank in which they pose as a
fictional girl with a crush on Ben. Jasons dad, Ex-cyber crimes cop Mike Dixon
(Frank Grillo) is too busy solving the digital issues of others to notice the dangerous
game of online fraud his son has engaged in.
Each of the characters in Disconnect is lonely. Some are lonely because they're
narcissistic, others because they're injured, depressed, or rejected. The narcissists
don't know they need anyone until it's too late; the rest just aren't strong enough to
explain their needs. But it turns out that everyone wants to make a connection. The
film addresses how we communicate this need. It's about the relationship between
communication, intimacy, and our desperation to make a connection.

The film conveys a world of too much information but too little communication,
where people have become slaves to hand-held devices that were designed to make
life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
The actos deliver strong acting that helps to improve their respective storylines.
Riseborough is brilliant as the local TV reporter whose ambition far exceeds her skill
set and her ethics. Thieriot's Kyle is a strutting peacock and aggressively obnoxious,
but we know he is masking his insecurity. Jason Bateman gives one of the best
dramatic performances as an attorney who's glued to his phone and waves off his
wife's concerns about their son. Colin Ford display a great performance as Jason, the
online bully who begins to feel remorse about torturing the class weirdo.
This type of film is nothing new ; however, the concept is executed well, by a skilled
filmmaker, so the journey becomes much more rewarding, despite its familiar
nature. This is a serious-minded, gloomy drama that is trying to tug your emotional
strings, offering some pretty shocking and/or uncomfortable moments along the
way.
Rubin's musical choices and Max Richter's score offers a perfect musical balance,
creating the exact right mood throughout the film.
The film's message -- about how the Internet is sabotaging our real-life relationships
-- doesn't resonate with absolute clarity, but "Disconnect" does an effective job in
115 minutes .
Disconnect is an excellent film, serious in intent, original in its narrative exposition
and its subject, need and intimacy, is interesting because it is so universal.
Everyone can relate to the characters in this film.