To me, this movie is perfection.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I would say this movie sits somewhere between 6 and 7 - it's a good job of entertainment, but a finicky viewer will find much to object to. I had to brace myself for the down-on-their-luck scenes, but those were balanced with the "meat" part of the tale well enough, for me. What was lackluster was their treatment of the ethical side of this matter, so look elsewhere if that's what interests you most.I couldn't decide whether or not the movie was an attack on Buddhism. I felt an ironic tone to that entire side of the film, and that the credulous viewer is being taken on a not-so-genuine carnival ride, although if deliberate it's done in a subtle enough fashion to be innocuous. It's the filmmaker's business if he wanted to portray that kind of view. Although maybe they were just going with the whole mystique of eastern religion as a contrast to a decidedly western perspective, which could add to the effect of making the plot feel more wholly fleshed out.

I wanted to watch this movie tonight because all the technology within this movie is in our real world and not just Hollywood. The movie is worth a 10 to me because I'm a software developer and a fan of neural lace biotechnology. I also could relate to the married man's relationship with his wife and daughter. The movie had an outstanding story and I thought the acting was also very good. From the start of the movie to the very end, my suspicion and curiosity gradually increased on what was about to happen in the next scene.Any tech fans will love this movie. Non technical individuals will probably view it as a poor movie. Married women who are contempt with a normal, white picked fence, linear life that includes a stable marriage, you probably will not like this movie.

An excellent script well performed.-- When you look at a street in almost any city in the western world today, you see cameras pointing towards the street to automatically and silently film people going about their regular business.The way to protect yourself from this kind of information gathering is by hiding your face ALWAYS, when you are outside. Which would most likely garner you a more intense surveillance - possibly wiretapping and your house bugged and your friends bugged and you mail read and electronic activities monitored, all the way up to physical intervention, incarceration, "evidence planted", defamation - possibly elimination, if the watchers cant make you.If you go on the net, there is no mechanism designed to cover your tracks and actions, which cannot be cracked - leaving your thought patterns, your needs, your funding, connections, friends, family etc wide open to blatant scrutiny or simple data gathering. Forget about VPN or Tor or what ever. One slip, and your IP is toast and not just your secrets are out, but everything your have ever shared digitally with anyone over the net.Why is that? Because ever since 9/11 USA and all other countries (in order to be able to send and receive plane passengers from all over) have treated their citizens and citizens of most other nations as suspects - potential threats to cities, infrastructure, businesses, economic structures and institutions and their national citizens too, if not for humanitarian reasons then from an attempt to prevent widespread fear and out-of-control actions taken by more than gun-ready-and-willing men and women.What if that lack of control over citizens could go away within a short while? What if USA, always seeking to be the bigger, the stronger, the wisest brother in the world, found a way to do that? What if the war on people was really patricide/matricide from blind greed, last rat gets the bigger loot?! = = = = = = = = = = = = = SPOILER = = = = = = = = = = = = = This movie explores well know themes of surveillance and mind control in order to show that mainstream people only used to guns in the media don't realize surveillance and monitoring and pooling private information is really a weapon against a nation's citizens, not a protection from foreigners.As an intellectual exercise this is kinda easy to both realize and sort of accept, but when you actually understand the implications of controlling powers being able to predict your actions and opinions and choices, it loses its intellectual shine as it verges towards actual loss of freedom - of mobility, speech, purchasing power, schooling, teaching, voting, housing, participating, giving aid and assistance etc.Population control is becoming an increasingly difficult task, as shown by the recent Sicario (2015), where whole major cities can be besieged by criminal and violent "examples" and all "loyalty" goes to those, who can instill fear, rather than to those who protect.While "Listening" may skip a bit on the realistic side, when it comes to calculating the consequences of thinking, feeling people falling pray to fascistic measures without relevant opposition - thus over-playing both spread and danger of a technological mind-control scheme - the script still manages to represent the eager greed with which possible control of people's patterns and actions is to be measured. (It IS lucky that everything living by electricity will die from lack of electricity or from magnetism. Making an EMP placed here and there hunky dory, if ever they tried anything similar in reality).But don't take the movie as a literal statement. Take it as a pointer to the magician's other hand: What is everyone upholding power doing in their free time, that they do not want out in the open? What are they doing during working hours, that they don't want to share? See this film as an argument for full disclosure - as long as it is out of VOLITION. In an atmosphere of distrust, meaning: "You go first..."

This director's debut film exceeded my expectations. LISTENING is a suspense-filled sci-fi film that's fast-paced, entertaining and did live up to its award-winning status! It never had down-time and kept entertaining right up till the end. The story-line had multiple levels with lots of twists, turns and intrigue. The moral implications of the movie's subject matter technology (mind reading) makes for a very interesting premise too. The acting was great and several hit it out of the ball park. You'll find yourself routing for the actors as their struggle unfolds, and the actress who turns out to be the home-wrecker is an attractive addition to the cast. One of the main actors (David) did a good job, but had a couple of scenes that I wished were redone to make him more believable, but I'm splitting hairs, he did a great job over-all. The cinematography was very good, interesting and intriguing. The use of lens flares at times made you feel like you were seeing the film through ones own eyes, live! Very well done! I expect more great things from this young director, and look forward to his future efforts. I would recommend this film to anyone who likes a good suspense-filled flick, and very thought-provoking in its delivery. See the movie, you'll be happy you did!