The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

Holy moly did I ever love this movie. Right after watching it I gave it a 10 on IMDb and bought the soundtrack. Which, strangely has a pretty low ranking despite a whole whack of glowing reviews with similar feelings to my own. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement. In the future everything is controlled by the governments and corporations, pretty familiar so far, right? We are told right away over a series of shots that seem like it's no the future at all, but right now. That, people with genetic compatibility is prohibited. We aren't told the repercussions but we know this is a big no no. Anything above 25% if I remember correctly is not a thing that is tolerated in this society. And then, it's kind of never brought up again. William Geld (Tim Robbins) goes to Shanghai to try and solve a problem for a corporation. Some "papeles" have been flagged with people who have fake IDs. Basically, these papeles are issued by the totalitarian are what allow people to travel to other places, and keep people outside of the cities in shanties out of the cities. William meets a woman named Maria while investigating and a really unique and interesting love story happens. I don't want to give much away but what follows is super compelling. The soundtrack is fantastic, the acting, cinematography, and script is just fantastic. The world is interesting and compelling over time. At first, everything doesn't seem like it's the future at all, and then slowly we are introduced to future tech and cultural things that make it clear that we are not in in the present. My favorite thing was that it seems as though everyone in this world has a short hand that mixes a bunch of different languages. They apologize and refer to boys and girls in Spanish in Shanghai, a young boy speaks french to his father in Seattle, some Chinese words are mixed throughout.Another thing is the concept of consensual viruses that alter people's minds. Code 46 infects everyone and forces them to do something specific, the main character has an empathy virus he uses to immediately discern things about people so long as they offer up something personal about themselves. It's a super neat concept.

Few movies manage to convey, between the "lovers", real elemental love. This one does within the premise of a doomed relationship in a futuristic love-antithetical world. There is a reason for this depth of love, which is both pivotal to the plot and to the legitimacy of the emotions felt by the characters. Maybe it is just the superb gifts of Samantha Morton. She is impossible not to love in this film and most of her others. There is a love scene of remarkable power; accomplished with single prolonged head shot.I am at a loss to say more about this film. It is really very simple in terms of plot; though the plot is ingenious. The plot serves to underscore the love between these characters; period. This movie is greatness.

I suppose its all about what you want to see in a movie. I did not really want to watch a movie and had this on in the background. I was glued to it. It really is Hal Hartley meets Ridley Scot with a few important caveats. There is no Blade Runner in it and honestly there is no middle America in it either. But it feels so much like their movies. It really is not, it is it's own beast. It is a pleasant voyeuristic view of the classic story of the officer and the thief. It's not surprising, its not dramatic or exciting. But it drags you through it in a very strange and disturbingly pleasant kind of way. It drops forbidden eroticism into it almost as an afterthought and manages to make it seem normal.This movie is all about what it does to us when we watch it, not about what it is about. Brilliant! Thanks for making it.

Code 46 is a Michael Winterbottom allegory about a near future world where human relationships are society are damned by the power of eugenics and the extensive use of in-vitro genetically-designed pregnancies.Tim Robbins is William Geld, a Government official on a trip to Shanghai to investigate a case of document forgery in a government security plant. There, he finds worker Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), to whom he feels immediately attracted despite his conviction that she is the forger. Their love story, however, is cursed from the beginning as, under Code 46, they must not enter in a relationship, get married or have a baby as they share at least 46% of their genetic code and are strongly family related.The movie is an allegoric projection into the future of the technological, scientific and cultural trends and issues predominant in the modern world. Being so, Code 46 is set in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society. The characters in the movie use an hybrid English mixed with words from different languages, mostly Spanish, but also Italian, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Basque among others, which work in the say way Spanglish does nowadays. Winterbottom's future is strictly compartmented and structured, with a controlled individual freedom, and limited freedom of movement between world areas unless you have "papelles" [= from the Spanish papeles, i.e. papers/documents), which are only granted depending on your health state and genetic disposition to certain maladies and weaknesses. A believable situation in which Private Health Insurance and Government are almost the same.The premises of the film are brilliant, thought-provoking and original, although connected with themes already presented in Gattaca. The high-tech future world is perfectly drawn and showed, and uses a mix of Shanghai, Dubai and Kuala-Lumpur futuristic urban settings and architecture, which provide a very sleek urban, metallic imagery and a cold feeling. In contrast, the outcast areas are wilder, more rural and underdeveloped, but warmer from a human point of view; they were shot in the desert area near Dubai and in India. The music (with a cameo performance by Mick Jones singing "Should I stay or should I go?) is also great, and gives a great mood to the movie.Despite the undeniable style and good premises of the movie, this gets washed out by a poor script that soon departs from the love story, which it is supposed to be the core of the movie. The leading characters are poorly drawn and explored, and the love story feels more like a lust story than anything else; moreover, Robbins and Morton don't have a great chemistry on camera either so the movie ends lacking emotion and the viewer ends the film thinking, where is the love? On the other hand, the outcast society and the outcasts are barely introduced, so it is difficult to understand the sort of world we are dealing with, as we are just presented with the developed part of it. In other words, while the future society feels like real future, the outcast society looks more like the underdeveloped rural areas of our modern world, not the underdeveloped areas of the future.A thought-provoking film with sleek visuals and music that is wasted by a drafted script and mediocre performances.