Circadian Rhythm (film)

Plot

Sarah L. Caul is 24 years old, attractive, skilled in martial arts, and highly intelligent. When the audience first meets her, she has no idea who she is, where she is from, or how she came to be in a white room, in no discernible location.

A familiar melody wakes Sarah from a deep sleep, and she finds herself teaching a history class in the school she attended at age 11. The ‘school’ is revealed to be a replica, and all of Sarah's books and files are completely blank and empty. Now thoroughly confused, Sarah's assistant principal, Sandrine (Terasa Livingstone), explains that Sarah is not a school teacher; rather, she is an assassin, and she has something on her body that Sandrine’s government desires. After a deadly shootout and a high speed chase on a cat-walk, Sarah is intercepted by another "handler" like Sandrine, who tells her the same story, claiming to be from a different country and a different agency, but still desiring the same unknown element. Like Sandrine, once the handler had extracted all of the evidence he could from Sarah, he attempts to kill her. Not able to trust anyone, Sarah spends the duration of her time in the construct trying to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth, and find out why so many people want her dead. She endures a series of wire-fu fights and a car chase while conducting an intense investigation into her past.

Sarah eventually finds herself back in the white room where she started, where, before she can be killed, two gunshots are heard and a slow, wobbly figure emerges from the shadows. The figure is revealed to be J. Edgar Hoover (Seymour Cassel), who is very much alive and very happy to see that his granddaughter, Sarah, is doing just fine. Apparently, Hoover was aware that two government factions had ascertained that he was still alive, and he used his granddaughter as bait to flush out these two agencies, thus eliminating them and any proof of his continued existence. Having shared this, Hoover helps Sarah up and dusts her off, and the two walk off into the light.

Cast

Crew

The film was directed by René Besson and written and produced by James Portolese. The stunts and fight choreography were arranged by Hong Kong martial artist Xiong Xin Xin.

Reception

The movie was critically ignored, and was poorly received in its few reviews, despite the mild success elsewhere of some of its actors (Miner went on to have roles in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Californication, and The Black Dahlia, among other productions). One reviewer stated that the film was a "directionless jumble of boring scenes strung together tenuously by a plot that feels like they were making it up as they went along," and that watching the film's allegedly ‘wire-fu’ fight scenes was akin to "being over at a friend’s house when they’re getting yelled at by their parents."