This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The dystopian thriller "High-Rise" is a limp exercise in social satire that strands a talented cast on the upper floors.
Tom Hiddleston stars as Robert Laing, a neurologist who moves into an ultramodern apartment building. The building's architect, Mr. Royal (Jeremy Irons), envisions the high-rise, and the others he's raising nearby, to be a perfect society open to all. But, in practice, it's a highly stratified system where the poor struggle on the lower floors while the elites party higher up — with Laing, alone on the 25th floor, watching the divide turn into a battle zone.
Director Ben Wheatley ("Sightseers") and his screenwriter/wife, Amy Jump, adapting J.G. Ballard's novel, enlist a solid cast, including Sienna Miller and Luke Evans, to embody characters as hard and cold as the brutalist concrete architecture. But he can't keep a handle on the spiraling destruction, and the movie devolves into an incoherent mess.
'High-Rise'
Opens Friday, May 27, at the Tower Theatre; rated R for violence, disturbing images, strong sexual content/graphic nudity, language and some drug use; 119 minutes.