Synopsis

Hollywood producer Mike Max, whose career is built on violent movies, is kidnapped and presumed dead after his abductors are found murdered. While hiding among Mexican gardeners, he tries to understand who targeted him. At the same time, surveillance technician Ray Bering watches Los Angeles through a secret camera network and discovers a government project capable of predicting and controlling violent acts.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was presented in competition at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

• After a lukewarm response to its Cannes work-in-progress screening, the movie was substantially re-edited before its theatrical release.

• Los Angeles is treated as a major visual character. Locations include the Griffith Observatory, Griffith Park, and the Santa Monica Pier.

• A sequence recreates Edward Hopper's famous 1942 painting "Nighthawks" as a live film-within-the-film tableau.

• The soundtrack combines Ry Cooder's score with contributions from Tom Waits, Los Lobos, U2, Sinead O'Connor, Michael Stipe, Vic Chesnutt, and other musicians.

• The movie's themes of omnipresent surveillance, media violence, and technological paranoia helped give it a stronger afterlife among viewers interested in 1990s anxieties about privacy and government monitoring.