Eternal Code

Eternal Code is a thriller with a SF backdrop. Bridgett (Erika Hoveland) is the CEO of a company that is on the verge of a major breakthrough in technology that could lead to eternal life.  Her company is on the cusp of merging with another, larger corporation. However, she discovers that that  company may not have the best intentions for her discovery and attempts to back out of the deal.

One board member, Oliver (Richard Tyson) badly wants the merger to go through and decides to take desperate measures to ensure that he gets what he wants.

At the same time we meet Corey (played by Damian Chinappi), a suicidal veteran living on the streets.  When we first see him he’s about to give himself a lead lobotomy but pauses to beat up a guy who is beating up a prostitute.  We also spend some time with him being a generally nice guy (when some teenage girls give him money, he uses it to buy food for other homeless people, as a for instance).

We get back to Oliver in time for him to activate some muscle. The muscle here are Sam and Charlie. Charlie is played by Scout Taylor-Compton of Rob Zombie’s Halloween fame. She’s playing against type here, and it is delightful. Watching this I felt sad that her career hasn’t really taken off since her run as Laurie Strode.  They are set to kidnap Bridgett in order to force her to come around to Oliver’s way of thinking.

 We can guess that Corey and his hooker friend will somehow get tangled in this madness.  They’ll be helping to save the kidnapped woman.   

Eternal Code takes a little while to get moving, but once it does the action keeps coming. It’s hour- forty-seven minute runtime is well paced. After the initial introductions, there isn’t much down time.

The cast is well used and do a solid job with the material that they are given.  The real standout is Scout Taylor-Compton, and it’s kind of a shame that she doesn’t get more screen time than she does.

The plot is interesting. These sorts of low budget actioners generally use a plot as something to hand chases and fight scenes on, but Eternal Code has some actual care for the story.  I did feel that the dialogue lacked any real panache. It was badly written, nothing came across as stilted or false, it just didn’t have any special character or flavor to it.

The movie looks good. Yes, you can tell that it’s a low budget affair, but it looks better than a lot of low budget films. The camera is very dynamic, and helps to keep a sense of action during expository scenes. 

Another note, the score is solid.  This is something I have noticed of late. It used to be that low budget movies were guaranteed to have terrible music that was poorly used. Recently though it seems like the creators of smaller movies are taking a serious interest in getting great music, and that makes a huge difference. A movie shot for very little money feels more real, more HOLLYWOOD, if the score is strong.

Final note- Eternal Code is a fast paced, action filled, fun time.  It has flaws, but those are outweighed by the strong cast and the solid action.


-Nathan Tyree