It was sure to happen at some point, a movie where cell phones feature prominently as the bad guy.  Accounted on a real-life communications monitoring program of the United States government, “The Echelon Conspiracy” is a movie that visits old science-fiction tropes only through the utilization of the newest technology in telecommunications, the cell phone. Now this idea may be a surplus these days, true, but picture when the invention was not introduced therefore constricting other ideas that go along with it. The cell phones play one of the most essential roles in the movie being the one form of communication and sometimes, the bad guy.

In fact, cell phones only seem to figure in so plainly at first – it finally turns out (SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT) that it’s a computer controlling everything behind the scense.  In fact, technically speaking, it’s the software that’s run amok, software that has somehow achieved a certain level of awareness.

Two problems of great interest immediately spring to mind: the real-world Echelon program, still so much shrouded in secrecy that the U.S. government still does not confirm or reject its existence, and the curious phenomenon of self-arrangement, or spontaneous order, in nature.

Alas, the film does not target any of these points, actually, and by the halfway point of the movie even cell phones take a back seat to the standard Hollywood standbys of car chases and gun fights. This added up the idea of advertising a brand new phone model into society. If the target audience does not have it already then it will be a appealing sight to see which might end up with them purchasing one. But if they currently have it, they will bring about a lot more faith on their phone and provider. But that’s not all, when a cell phone is publicized who else do you think is observing? That’s right, the other companies. Instead of competing why not just invest in some to introduce to their customers?

It’s not a bad movie, to be sure; the case is getting enough considering the material they have to work with, which is your basic action-spy-thriller.  And it all begins intriguing enough, opening with a woman mysteriously reading instructions in her mobile handset, to the point of descending into the Washington, D.C. metro’s tracks, where she meets her end – only to have our protagonist strangely receive the same mysterious phone in the mail during the next scene, a phone which, it turns out, provides the most prodigious of instructions concerning apparently random events, from airline crashes to casino jackpots.  It’s an exciting premise, but ninety minutes of screentime almost guarantees that any treatment can only be overly facile.

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