Producers: Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan, Michael De Luca and Aaron Ryder   Director: Lisa Joy   Screenplay: Lisa Joy   Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Cliff Curtis, Marina de Tavira, Daniel Wu, Mojean Aria, Brett Cullen, Natalie Martinez, Angela Sarafyan, Roxton Garcia and Nico Parker   Distributor: Warner Bros. and HBO Max

Grade: D+

That old pulp and film noir standby—the one about the fellow obsessed with finding the woman he fell for but lost—is recycled with dystopian sci-fi elements in Lisa Joy’s “Reminiscence,” which—if you’ll pardon the pun—as about as joyless an exercise in “Laura”-like sleuthing one’s likely to encounter in this or any other century.  It’s a ponderous piece of retro storytelling gussied up with futuristic flourishes. 

The story is set in some unspecified future, when a “border war” has left the country in tatters and the coastal areas submerged by rising seas.  Most of Miami is regularly flooded, with only the enclave of the rich, protected by levies against the tides, still dry.  Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a PI and former border soldier, works in a tech-heavy office on a side street, immersing his clients in some sort of water tank; they wear an electrode-laden headset that allows their memories to be relived via hologram images Nick can call up by verbal suggestion.  These he stores on glass discs that he archives in a locked vault. Nick also occasionally works with the DA (Natalie Martinez) to elicit memories from suspects that can be used as evidence in court.

Jackson explains all this to us in a gush of platitudinous narration as we’re shown the process occurring under the eyes of Bannister and his assistant Watts (Thandiwe Newton), who was also his sharp-shooting partner in the army.  (Later she tells us, in one of the many cliché-ridden bits of dialogue running through the movie, that she hasn’t seen her estranged daughter in a long while because “I’m not the maternal type.”)

Late one day a woman wanders in.  Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) is an enigmatic beauty who seeks Nick’s help in using his memory machine to locate a set of lost keys.  More as a matter of plot necessity than of any perceptible emotional spark between them, Nick is suddenly in love with her, apparently because she brings back his memories of the beautiful old Rodgers and Hart classic “Where or When”—which is then heard so often in bits and pieces through the rest of the picture that, given what an unpleasant experience “Reminiscence” is, you might never want to encounter it again).             

Mae, of course, abruptly disappears, sending Bannister on an obsessive search for her.  It takes him—via an accidental sighting in a memory he draws from a crook being interrogated by the DA–to New Orleans, where he’s threatened with a beating—or worse—from drug kingpin Saint Jo (Daniel Wu), whose henchmen try to drown him in an aquarium full of eels.  (Nick is, it should be noted, neither exceptional bright nor physically adept.  In this instance, as elsewhere, he has to be rescued by somebody else.  His singular skill seems to lie in producing reams of boring narration.)

Ultimately the solution comes down to a pedestrian conspiracy involving dying Miami mogul Walter Sylvan (Brett Cullen), his demented wife Tamara (Marina de Tavira), their shy son Sebastian (Mojean Aria), and crooked cop Cyrus Boothe (Cliff Curtis)—along with another mother and child (Angela Sarafyan and Roxton Garcia), as well as Mae, who’s playing a double, or triple, or quadruple game.  It’s all very convoluted, but the would-be highlight is a ludicrously protracted one-on-one between Boothe and Bannister, which involves hand-to-hand brawling in dumpy rooms, a rooftop chase, and an episode in which a grand piano, over which two men are struggling, sinks into the sea.  Some of us will be more concerned with the wellbeing of the piano than that of either man.

Jackman struggles to endow Nick with a degree of depth, but fails; Bannister remains a curiously dim, dreary fellow, perhaps because of all the stultifying narration he has to deliver.  Ferguson isn’t really conventionally beautiful, and doesn’t quite manage the vision of an irresistible femme fatale.  Nor do the two set off sparks together.  Still, the script doesn’t offer them much to deal with besides the abstract idea of a passionate relationship.  Of the others, Curtis makes a sneering villain and Wu an oily one, but only Newton truly hits the mark as Nick’s Watts(on), who’s loyal to the end. 

The visual effects team supervised by Bruce Jones do some impressive work here in the distance shots of the flooded city, but on the more down-to-earth level Howard Cummings’ production design and Jennifer Starzyk’s costumes are pretty drab.  Paul Cameron’s widescreen cinematography goes for a grey, depressing look, and Ramin Djawadi’s score for a gloomy, ominous sound. 

But in the final analysis Joy bears responsibility for the film’s failure.  She wrote a script that comes across as an unwieldy attempt to redo “Chinatown” by way of “Blade Runner,” and then directed it ponderously, apparently so convinced of the quality of her pretentious dialogue that she insisted it be delivered reverentially.  Tossing in a couple of a couple of laborious action sequences, both of which go on far too long, is insufficient compensation, and the last act drags on interminably, making Mark Yoshikawa’s editing feel even more lethargic.

“Reminiscence” only runs a bit under two hours, including the final credits roll, but it feels much longer.  And despite its premise, you’ll probably soon forget it, and not care.