Cypher (film)

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Jeremy Northam as a corporate spy in Cypher.

Cypher is a Canadian sci-fi spy film released in 2002, directed by Vincenzo Natali and written by Brian King. It stars Jeremy Northam and Lucy Liu.

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Trivia
4 Related movies
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Morgan Sullivan is bored by his life and decides to follow a career in corporate espionage. He gets hired by the fictitious technology corporation Digicorp, which gives him the alias Jack Thursby. Digicorp sends him to conventions, in order for him to secretly record the speeches, which are transmitted back to headquarters via satellite. Sullivan is soon haunted by recurring nightmares and pain in the back of his neck. When he meets a mysterious woman, Rita Foster, from a competing corporation, his life starts to get complicated.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Rita gives him some pills to make the pain go away and the nightmares stop. She asks him what his transmitting device is. It's his pen. She tells him not to turn it on at the next convention. Morgan finds this an odd advice, but acts on it just the same.

When he speaks with Digicorp over the telephone on the flight home and finds out they got his transmission - despite there not being one - Morgan knows something is wrong. He takes the pills Rita gave him. They work. He has no idea who she works for but trusts her. She seems to know more about what is going on than he does. There's also something about her that has him intrigued. He wants to know her better and arranges to meet with her again.

They meet in a refrigerated container which turns out to be on the back of a truck. As they move off, Morgan feels afraid. Rita tells him that the mineral water he has been drinking at each conference is spiked with an odorless and tasteless drug. She has the antidote. It's a green liquid inside the big syringe one of her companions is holding. He decides to trust Rita once again even though her companions seem dangerous. She sternly warns him that no matter what happens at the next convention he must not react.

Digicorp is brainwashing all convention owners to keep them distracted from the reality. In reality all of them work for digicorp and believe to be corporate spies for the company. All subjects are being used for experimentation. During the convention workers check and probe all in the room and inject drugs into their system. Digicorp is brainwashing all goers to believe they are their alter egos. The company is changing their identities. It is all a ploy to be able to spy successfully at other companies. Sunway Systems, a rival company uses Sullivan to feed corrupted data to Digicorp once it is done he will be eliminated. He seeks help from Rita and she says yes. In reality Sullivan was being used by Rita's boss, Sebastian Rooks, to get info from Sunway Systems. He is almost caught in a Sunway Systems' vault, but he escapes with the help of Rita.

After they escape, Rita takes Sullivan to see Rooks. The two of them enter a wooden furnished apartment in a skyscraper. Rita tells Sullivan to wait and leaves to a nearby room, in order to arrange the meeting with Rooks. Sullivan, which by now is very anxious calls Finster from a telephone. He hangs it up seconds before Rita returns. Sullivan is now terrified, and the whole situation gets out of control. Sullivan shoots Rita at her left arm with a handgun and wounds her slightly. Rita drops on the floor, still conscious. Sullivan freezes by what he sees, but Rita tells him that he must meet Rooks, and points to a door. Sullivan opens it at finds himself in a room with objects which appear to be personal to him, including photographs showing him and Rita being together. Realizing that he is Rooks and shocked by this, he turns to Rita. She explains that from the beggining all this was an elaborate scheme created by him to obtain Sunway Systems' data.