Control Factor (2003)

Entertainment can be very cyclical. What was popular at one time will become popular again after a period of dormancy. This can be heard regularly in music, when people write songs that harken back to what they grew up on. Modern bands like Greta Van Fleet harken back to older bands like Led Zeppelin. People like Dua Lipa and Gwen Stefani have released songs with disco influence. The Weeknd released music that took the 1980s aesthetic and gave it a modern production spin.

The same cyclical nature can be seen in movies. Reboots, remakes, and re-imaginings are the most obvious, as studios try to recapture the monetary magic they had in past years. But genres are also cyclical. A genre that fell out of favour fifty years ago might become popular again in the present day. IT might be updated with a modern sheen. Think about westerns. They were most popular from the 1930s through the 1960s and then mostly faded from the limelight for a few decades. Westerns with a modern aesthetic started popping up in the 1990s. Following that, there were a bunch of westerns set in the modern day. Westerns just kept coming back in a cyclical nature.

Political thrillers did the same thing. The Cold War brought them to their peak thanks to the espionage of both the CIA and the KGB. There were numerous movies about people being caught up in the spy games between the two major Cold War countries. There were movies about shady politicians and conspiracy theories that, in the movies’ worlds, were real. With the dissolution of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall by the early 1990s, the political thrillers faded away for a little bit. By a little bit, I mean about five years. The late 1990s brought major technological advancements, which led to political thrillers involving the government spying on people. Internet, CCTV, and the like made it easier for privacy to be invaded and movies milked that for thriller fodder.

One of the movies to come out of the modern technology wave of political thrillers was Control Factor. It was a Sci-Fi Channel original movie about how technology could be used for evil. Lance Bishop (Adam Baldwin) was an average guy working a regular job. One day, Trevor Constantine (Peter Spence) showed up and started shooting people at Lance’s workplace. It kickstarted a series of events that led to Lance’s life falling apart as the government tested new mind control technology on him and many of the poor people in town.

I’m going to get into spoilers for Control Factor. If you, for whatever reason, want to watch this 2003 Sci-Fi Channel original movie without being spoiled, you should probably stop reading. The only way to explain how it was an updated version of the political thrillers of the Cold War is to get into detail about what happened in the movie and why. Consider this your warning.

Control Factor started out much like the political thrillers of the 1970s. Think about things like Three Days of the Condor or The Parallax View. Lance was minding his own business at his office job when Trevor showed up and started shooting a gun. Trevor confronted Lance, said something along the lines of “I have to save you before it happens, Mr. Bishop,” and was about to kill Lance before being killed himself by a security guard. This moment stuck with Lance because he didn’t know Trevor, whereas Trevor absolutely knew him. Why did Trevor know his name? Why had Trevor come for him? Lance began to spiral and dug into this conspiracy he just discovered.

This was a moment present in many political thrillers from the Cold War days. Something strange happened to the main character, who was then thrown into a conspiracy they hadn’t previously known about. Lance was taken from his normal life and thrown into a world of espionage, whether he liked it or not. The only catch was that he had already been in that world. His eyes simply had yet to be opened to it.

The conspiracy in Control Factor involved mind control, kind of like The Manchurian Candidate, though with a more technological twist instead of brainwashing. It was the new millennium after all. The Cold War politics weren’t going to cut it anymore. The conspiracy had to be a technological conspiracy led by the government. Lance was the target of a mind control program. The government would go into poor neighbourhoods and use their technology to steal the emotions of the tenants. They would then take these emotions and place them into test subjects, including Lance, to control their emotions and, in turn, them.

Control Factor showed how the government’s shady use of technology had replaced the Cold War conflict in this type of movie. The Cold War wasn’t really the heart of the conflict in those movies, though. Many of them were about the government committing atrocities against their own people for the sake of power. Or to cover up a war crime committed as a part of the Cold War. Many times, the American government was chasing and killing American citizens through these movies. When the Cold War ended, technology simply became the new backdrop for the government committing atrocities against their own people. Lance Bishop realized that as he dug further into the mind control conspiracy.

His first point of business was to investigate Trevor, the guy who tried to kill him. He found out Trevor left behind videos explaining the government’s plan for mind control. With the aid of Trevor’s friend Reggie (Tony Todd), Lance discovered that the stakes were much, much bigger than his own life. He was a test to see if mind control could work. The government was going to use cell towers to amplify the mind control capabilities and control the entire American population.

At the heart of any political thriller is the desire of a government to obtain or retain power. The government always wants power over the people. Assassinations could be used to shift the power of the government from one person to another. Covering up wiretaps and assassinations keep people from finding out the atrocities and keep the same people in power. Mind control would obviously be controlling the people, which means power. Constant cameras watching people mean that the government has power over people by knowing where they are and what they are doing. Everything in political thrillers involves the government wanting power.

Once Lance saw that the conspiracy was about power, he had to look inward. There had to be a reason everything seemed so close to him. It was because he was the test subject. He went home, saw that his home was bugged, the neighbours were actually a fake tape being played to sound like neighbourly noise behind closed doors, and that his wife Karen (Elizabeth Berkley) was in on it. His life was a fake, concocted by the government so that he wouldn’t suspect what they were doing to him.

One of the biggest twists in political thrillers involves someone close to the main character not being who they seem. A friend or confidant could be secretly working for the government, much like Karen. They could have been compromised through a bribe or some form of blackmail. Blackmail is only illegal if you get caught. The government won’t catch themselves for it. They can barely get their act together to catch Trump for anything that he did when he was running for office or in office. That’s not the point, though. The point is the confidant character. Whatever the scenario, there will always be a betrayal by someone close to the protagonist.

There’s not much more to Control Factor outside of the conflict between Lance and the government. He fled, worked with Reggie to fight against the technological power they harnessed, and fought against the wife who had been working against him. He was on the run most of the time. The political machine was trying to chew him up and spit him out for their own benefit, regardless of how it would affect his life. Because they didn’t care. They just wanted the power that came with mind control. Lance was collateral damage to get to their goal.

Control Factor was a good example of how political thrillers like Three Days of the Condor or The Parallax View had evolved into the new millennium. Perhaps it wasn’t as good as, say, Enemy of the State at doing the technological political thriller. But what can you expect from a Sci-Fi Channel original movie? It was still a solid, fun flick about a man fighting back against the government conspiracy against him. At least, I had a good time watching it.

The cyclical nature of movies has caused political thrillers to become popular time and time again. They were popular in the Cold War era, fell out of favour for a couple years, then came back as technology advanced with the internet to a global scale. Technology replaced the USSR as the justification for the government to do shady things, and that bled into political thrillers in a big way. They were back, just with a new layer to them. Like the westerns and the Universal monster movies.

Entertainment can be very cyclical. What people like at one time might fall out of fashion only to come back later. It happens a lot. It happens with music genres, movie genres, even characters, actors, and musicians. This is especially prevalent as new advancements are discovered that help people uncover new ways to explore what they liked. A new twist on a genre, an actor going out of their normal performance style, or music getting a new production quality. It’s only a matter of time until that thing you enjoyed as a kid gets a new twist. Will you be ready?

I hope you’re ready for these notes:

• Control Factor was David Ferry’s third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance, behind The Stupids (week 188) and Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (week 450).
• Mif was also in Control Factor and The Stupids (week 188).
• John Neville returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Control Factor. He was previously in Baby’s Day Out (week 5).
• Raoul Bhaneja was in both Ice Soldiers (week 71) and Control Factor.
• Actor Greg Benson appeared in Control Factor. He also appeared in Top Dog (week 126).
• Karen in Control Factor was played by Elizabeth Berkley. She was the star of Showgirls (week 170).
• Adam Baldwin played Lance in Control Factor. He was also one of the main characters in D.C. Cab (week 293).
• Finally, Tony Todd is a recognizable face from many movies. He was in both Wishmaster (week 410) and Control Factor.
• Have you seen Control Factor? What did you think of it? Was it fun or not? Do you like the modern political thrillers that use technology? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Twitter.
• If there are movies you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, tell me about them. I’m on Twitter and I check the comments, so you can drop your suggestions in either place.
• Head on over to Instagram where Sunday “Bad” Movies has more than just my writing.
• Next week should be fun. I’m diving into more of the DVDs that I have with a movie called Morons from Outer Space. It comes from the director of Flash Gordon (week 81) and I hope I’m going to have a good time with it. Either way, good or bad, I’ll be writing something after seeing it. It would be swell if you all came back next week for that post.