TRON

   Film (1982) Lisberger/Kushner/Walt Disney. Dir Steven Lisberger, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan. Screenplay Lisberger, from a story by Lisberger, Bonnie MacBird. 96 mins. Colour.

   In this pleasing but lightweight film, a young man (Bridges) seeks evidence about dirty work in the computer company from which he has just resigned. Smuggled into the firm's building by friends, he is deconstructed by theMaster Control Program (or MCP) software, which rules the VIRTUAL REALITY within which he comes to consciousness as a subprogram (along - just as in Oz - with analogues of two friends programmed by them to help him out).There follows, disappointingly, a standard Good-against-Evil struggle - involving Bridges and MCP's hench-progam Sark (Warner), itself an analogue of a real-life evil-doer - on a somewhat austere computer-generated landscape resembling that of a rather good video game (GAMES AND TOYS). The film has moments of wit, and a stunning last shot where the nowreconstituted hero looks down on the streets of Los Angeles at night, for all the world like the computer grid from which he has escaped. This suggests that perhaps the whole film is a light-hearted text about determinism, but most of it aspires to being little more than a wide-screen arcade-game scenario.

   PN