With a generic story and script and average special effects Encrypt comes across as a film suffering from too little budget and uninspired casting, and the ultimate theme is muddled behind sentiment and cheesy music score.

In 2068 the surface of the Earth has degraded so much that the Ozone layer is disintegrating and warring bands of survivors struggle for enough food to survive.  Capt. John Thomas Garth leads a small group of people who have huddled together to glean what food they can from the surrounding former urban landscape.  When Garth (Grant Show) gets an offer from a former army associate Lapierre (Steve Bacic) to aid a rich man who has obtained a vast estate and supply of food, he accepts thinking there may be a chance of a better existence.  The King (Matthew Taylor) hires Garth to steal a cache of art from a local estate, promising him and his community food and medicine, but warns him that there is a security obstacle.  Once he and his crew arrive Garth is confronted by a hologram of Diana (Vivian Wu) who tries to prevent the team from entering the compound because of the life-threatening security, but there is something more valuable than food and art stored in the estate and Garth is determined to discover it.

It's too bad there wasn't a larger budget for this one.  There are many opportunities for the filmmakers to make visual statements about the world we live in (if the director had a feel for the material), instead of a by-the-numbers action flick that it is.  It is basically designed from a gaming script where Garth's team has to travel through successive rooms of greater dangers to reach a vault.  Along the way Diana appears as a hologram to warn the team off, but this is so much dialogue-muddled story telling and only frustrates the viewer because we aren't getting information we don't already know.

The special effects are passable but only on TV and in fact the film feels like a quickly, albeit professionally done, after-school special with an oh-so-sentimental ending.  There are some nice action scenes but we already pretty much know where the story is heading and who will be the victor, but there is still a nice surprise at the end.   Grant Show, who has made a career on TV with "Accidentally on Purpose", "Private Practice", "Swingtown", "Point Pleasant", "Six Feet Under", "Melrose Place", and "Ryan's Hope" is well cast as an actor who fits in well with the light-weight thematic and visual material of the made for TV movie Encrypt.

One of the key problems is that nearly all the performances are by actors who are clearly not method actors and have little emotional connection to their stories.  The key character Garth is suffering from the death of his wife and son, and this supposedly motivates him to lead and protect his community of survivors.  Actor Grant Show plays Garth like he heading for a morning surf safari although layering stoicism to give depth to the ex-military man.  Ultimately we don't care what happens to Garth because the actor doesn't show us enough of the emotional vulnerability in the character and what's at stake on a personal level for him if he succeeds in his mission.  Although Vivian Wu has done great work directed by Peter Greenaway in The Pillow Book, 8 ½ Women, in Encrypt she has little pivotal effect on the action.  Because of Diana's extra-sensory powers she can understand that Garth is only doing a job, but she also injects memories of his dead wife and child to influence his emotions, but we are never given reasons why the two fall in love.

All in all, Encrypt is a nice 90-minute escape, something to do on a rainy day, but don't look for any real messages, or meaning in this sci-fi actioner.  It is a cut-and-dry formulaic film that relies on its source material of interactive game for forward motion.  It does have some interesting little action scenes all designed to distract the viewer from the lack of real story, and the ending although laden with heavy sentiment via connotative imagery and pointed music track delivers the expected finale.

Have a cup of coffee with this one and a bag of Oreos to keep you occupied while you watch the action sequences and cheesy computer-generated special effects, and while the scenes fade to black as the producers clearly have edited for commercial breaks.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older