I wouldn’t say corporate espionage is automatically a dull subject for a dramatic thriller, but in “Paranoia,” Liam Hemsworth sure does his best to make it seem that way.
The Australian lunkhead plays Adam, a Brooklyn tech-industry striver with Manhattan ambitions who is strong-armed by his boss, a ruthless and controlling tech magnate (Gary Oldman), into infiltrating their rival company (headed by Harrison Ford) to learn about its secret new product. Adam gets in over his head; it gets dangerous; he’s on the run: you know the drill. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a more generic and predictable version of this formula, directed anemically by Robert Luketic (“The Ugly Truth,” “21”). It’s watered down further by Hemsworth’s one-dimensional performance and the older actors’ disinterest: Ford and Oldman don’t even seem to be having fun, and Richard Dreyfuss — misused as Hemsworth’s sick but randy father — doesn’t have anything fun to do. It’s a shame to waste such perfectly capable old hams on such thin material.
C- (1 hr., 46 min.; )
