Occasionally you’re channel surfing and just stumble across a show that catches your eye. Thirty minutes later, you realize you’re no longer surfing and are instead engrossed in this new program. I had a similar epiphany this weekend with a small flick called “Thoughtcrimes.”
It’s a made-for-television movie that originally aired on the USA Network in 2003. It’s also pretty clearly a springboard for what they hoped would be a regular series. Alas, that didn’t happen. What does happen is an engaging and well-acted little sci-fi drama that shows a lot of promise, good chemistry, and a pretty nifty core concept.
In “Thoughtcrimes,” Freya McAllister (Navi Rawat) starts hearing voices in her head during her high school prom and is diagnosed as a violent schizophrenic and committed to a mental hospital where she spends the next eight years of her life. It’s there that she meets Dr. Michael Welles (Peter Horton) — a researcher for the NSA — who explains that Freya isn’t crazy, she is, in fact, a telepath. Helping Freya learn to control her newfound powers, she’s partnered with a rebellious NSA field operative (Joe Flanigan) to try to stop the assassination of a top government official; they fight crime!
On the surface it sounds pretty corny, but it works amazingly well. First, the origin story of Freya takes about 45 minutes; the rest of the show is her being paired up with the hot-headed and suspicious NSA partner who doesn’t know about Freya’s gifts. The plot has a heavy “Day of the Condor” feel to it but mostly it’s the acting and chemistry of these two feature characters that make it work. The hook is, of course, our insight into Freya’s powers. Conversations have a “whisper subtitle” that allows the viewers to ‘hear’ things from Freya’s perspective. This gets pretty confusing at times, as Freya will be having a verbal dialog exchange with a person while we’re hearing their thoughts, all at the same time. It works amazingly well and does a good job of illustrating the chaos of someone having to multitask in such a situation. This gets ramped up a notch or two when Freya is stressed in public situations: it’s a madhouse of voices. One nice happenstance is that Freya’s new partner has a photographic memory, although it takes Freya’s telepathy to help guide him through the memories in his head. Had “Thoughtcrimes” been picked up as a series, this would have certainly been an interesting twist.
“Thoughtcrimes” thankfully bucks the “evil NSA” trend and avoids a several easy clichés. However, the show doesn’t take any risks, either. What you get is a good, if not predictable, show that’s enjoyable to watch. There are worse things, I suppose!
For my part, I find “Thoughtcrimes” particularly intriguing, especially since I’m currently playing a telepath in our weekly Trinity game. The show doesn’t dramatically alter my perceptions of how telepathy or such powers would work, but it does give a fairly “realistic” framework as to how someone would react and try to cope with such abilities. That’s pretty cool.
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