Branded [Blu-ray]

This movie seems to be an indictment of mass consumerism with introspective insights into the loss of one's individuality. It also explores the dangers of being too lazy when it comes to not questioning the propaganda that we come in contact with every day via television, radio and other forms of media.

Corporate advertising is a multi-million dollar industry. CEOs of major corporations wouldn't be willing to spend millions of dollars for television advertising if they didn't think that such advertising could be used to sway opinion and manipulate the behavior of millions of people.

This movie goes beyond saying that advertising executives are sleazy, and goes on to show advertising executives breaking the law and putting people's health at risk in order to market their products and bring in bigger and bigger profits.

This is not a fun movie, although I rather enjoyed the (perhaps unconscious) symbolism as it showed corporate avatars taking the place of the old pagan gods. Instead of worshipping Odin and Zeus and Ra and Apollo, people now worship Coke and Pepsi and McDonalds and Apple.

Despite the social messages (which I rather agreed with) I found the movie to be difficult to enjoy. It's a cerebral message, and a message worth teaching, but it's certainly not an enjoyable movie to watch.

This film is a little gem, and it's rather sad that the only people seeing it are those who have been duped by the trailer into thinking it's some kind of science fiction/horror film. In fact, it's spiritually allied with 'Idiocracy' and plot-wise pitched about midway between 'They Live' and 'How To Get Ahead In Advertising' (more the latter than the former), though it has more in common stylistically with Terry Gilliam and Jean Pierre Jeunet than it does John Carpenter. It may not be perfect, but it certainly doesn't deserve the disappointed flak its ad campaign is drawing from those duped by the trailer into expecting a fairly cheesy looking alien invasion flick with nothing whatsoever on its mind.

Luckily, this movie about the evils of advertising will find its audience despite its evil advertising, given a bit of time and word of mouth. I suspect the adverse reaction it's getting may even strengthen its reputation in the long run by making its intended audience more amenable than it might have been if the action movie fans' reviews had been good.

So maybe it's actually the perfect strategy if what you're trying to create is a cult for your film, and the marketing team actually took some cockeyed notice of what the film was about after all...

This movie has some very interesting and insightful things to say about the evils of corporate greed, the untrustworthiness of the advertising industry and a certain something about how the average person is vulnerable to being manipulated by propaganda.

However despite the intelligence of their message, this movie is rather depressing and disturbing. It may give you something intelligent to talk about after the closing credits, however you won't enjoy it.

Perhaps it wasn't meant to. Perhaps it was the sort of movie that is SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable and make you question the propaganda that you're exposed to in your daily life and perhaps make you not trust the propaganda that you're exposed to.

Perhaps.

Nevertheless, I still couldn't enjoy this movie.