Naked Singularity movie review (2021)

“Naked Singularity” is not science fiction, much less failed science fiction, but a comedy-drama with a cosmic sensibility. It repeatedly lets its characters discuss theories about why modern life seems so broken and perverse. They never arrive at satisfying explanations, but talking it out serves as an extra-dramatic steam valve, releasing pent-up bad vibes. 

At various points, the hero’s neighbor, a pothead physicist played by Tim Blake Nelson, shows up reiterate the script’s binding ideas, including a theory that the universe is headed towards collapse-implosion, like matter sucked into a black hole. That excess of gravity explains everything from the power failures that recur throughout the film to the way that the legal system keeps punishing minor infractions with long sentences. (The smug face of the system is represented by Broadway star Linda Lavin, playing a judge so misanthropic that when offenders try to become better people, she punishes them even more harshly.) 

The opening section, which lays out the moral and logistical details of Casi’s world and features a hard-boiled voice-over narration that never returns, is the most engrossing, because it makes us feel as if we’re about to see the kind of movie that rarely gets made anymore: a New York drama about idealism being crushed beneath the weight of corruption, apathy, and self-interest. The more the script (co-written by David Matthews) focuses on the details of stealing the drug money, the less special the film becomes. There’s a lot of wasted motion, and when the story careens towards the final stretch of its 93-minute running time, you can’t help noticing that Cooke’s character never added up to much, and that we never quite felt the hero’s disillusionment and anger as keenly as we needed to. (This is a rare movie that needed more time to breathe; seemingly important elements, such as the gangster Hasidim entangled with Skrein’s character, appear to have been cut for pacing.)

Still, there’s no denying that both the story and the mood of the picture suit the time in which was released. “Naked Singularity” arrives at a moment when human civilization seems to be reaping karmic punishment for generations of callous self-interest. This is a film for an era of melting glaciers, flooded cities, burning forests, Covid variants, and armored cops gassing, beating, and shooting unarmed citizens because it’s fun for them, and because officials like Lavin’s judge will make sure they’re never punished. To paraphrase “And Justice for All…”, the whole system is out of order.

Now playing in theaters and available on demand on August 13.