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Best movie of this year hands down!

Sorry, this movie sucks

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

With a strong cast and intriguing premise 'Looker' .... looks impressive. But it's NOT! By "strong cast" I mean Playmate Of The Year Terri Welles. She visits Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Albert Finney requesting some very specific changes down to .1 millimeters.The movie's off to a great start with Welles getting topless within the first five minutes. However the scene is so brief I literally watched the movie THREE TIMES before I even noticed this scene! WTF? This is the money shot! That's like having the chariot race in 'Ben-Hur' last only three seconds! Welles and other of Dr. Finney's patients turn up dead. The movie might as well be over! Terri Welles is dead within SIX MINUTES!!! WTF? They've all been thrown off balconies by a killer whom looks like John Holmes or Chuck Norris from the cover of 'The Good Guys Wear Black.' The only model not killed is Susan Dey. Susan Dey? Susan Day from 'L.A. Law' is our leading lady and trying desperately to be sexy? This is the final nail in the coffin for the film.Not even villain James Coburn can save this wreck, and he wasn't even in the trailer.The master plot revolves around an evil company developing an illegal super weapon... a ray gun which causes the victim to lose time. That's how they killed the girls. This seems pretty far fetched for a petty weapon. If they wanted a silent non lethal weapon Thomas A. Swift already beat them to it. Or they could just use a tranquilizer gun. But since they killed the models anyway, and not silently, they could have just used a gun, knife, or blunt object! Their ray gun is pretty pathetic.Why did this company kill its own models? That's never explained! This whole movie is a waste of time. The trailer promised me a movie staring Terri Welles but she's dead by the time the credits end. Skip this mess at all costs.

Dr. Larry Roberts is a well renowned Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who makes beautiful women even more so, however he captures the attention of the police when three of his model patients are strangely murdered. Seeing a link with the three, he's determined not to let the same thing happened to the fourth girl, Cindy. There he finds further information about a program called Digital Matrix, where a computer system photographs and measures models to create a duplicate image for TV.Novelist Michael Crichton again hit's the director's chair (fourth time after 'Westworld', 'Coma' and 'The First Great Train Robbery') to adapt his material (which he also contributed the film's screenplay). The gimmicky 'Looker' is a polished piece, but definitely lesser than that of his previous outings. What lifts it up out left field is its audaciously sophisticated look at the manipulative side of media advertising, digital technology advancement and the dependency on perfect appearances. Crichton seems comfortable with these pervasive paranoid sci-fi thrillers where we take everything for face valve, but underneath there's something not quite right or waiting to destruct. There's a real sharp edge to the scientific theories (with some nicely amusing satirical digs), however with its dead-serious tone it can fall into silliness, illogical occurrences and its big aspirations aren't always matched, but in the end there's a real strange quality to the story (like the optical gun) and the visuals that go on to make it rather striking. Too bad about the ending fizzling out. Crichton's direction keeps it clinically tight as the energy levels arise in the last 30 minutes of blindingly staged suspense. Barry DeVorz's suggestively trance-like electronic score gels well with eerily smoky atmospherics. The performances by the likes of Albert Finney, Susan Dey, James Coburn and Leigh Taylor-Young all remain solid. Also appearing are Tim Rossovich and Dorian Harewood.Flawed, but engrossing entertainment.

Spoilers within.I just watched this again and it occurred to me that it still works in 2007. If anything the premise is even more believable now than it was 26 years ago. In that sense it was a pretty darn accurate bit of future prediction in terms of where our video and computer technology was going.I've always liked this movie. It stands as a classic underrated film and a fond memory of my childhood. I took two points off though, one for each of the two problems I have with it: First, they didn't provide enough motivation or explanation for killing the models. One of them seemed to have figured out what was really going on, so that makes sense. But the others? Was it just to avoid paying out their contracts? They made a point of saying how rich the RI company was, so the cost would seem to be trivial in comparison to murder.Second, it struck me as odd that they could accurately digitize human beings but they still shot the commercials on a real set. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Even today it's much easier to model a kitchen than it is to model a human being.Overall though it's still a solid and enjoyable flick. You could make this movie today and it would be a perfectly good film for 2007.

Those of us who grew up on HBO programming in the early 1980's will easily remember the "light gun" from Looker, as the film was one of the most played flicks in HBO's catalogue. The movie was suspenseful, entertainingly acted, and possessed some cheap effects that were, nevertheless, fun to behold. The PG-rating for films with adult characters has really disappeared in the era of making money off of PG-13 films, and that's led to a reduction in films of this character."Looker" is not without weaknesses such as lapses in logic, but it possesses the traits of a typical Michael Crichton story that make for a thoughtful excursion into another person's world. Albert Finney was memorable for his confused and determined (if strikingly unathletic) doctor trying to unravel the mystery before him. Time shift scenes and the score make for positives, as well.