"23"

Why have so many notorious political assassinations or elections occurred on the 23rd of the month? Why do Masonic symbols appear on US currency? Why is information more important than wealth? Hans-Christian Schmid's German thriller makes clever use of the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, whose Iluminatus trilogy explores the web of secret societies that rule the world as we know it.

Karl Koch and his pal David are 19 years old in 1985: phone phreaks and computer hackers involved with anti-nuclear protesters. They meet a couple of small-time gangsters who arrange to sell their information to the KGB. Drunk on power, high on drugs, and obsessed with conspiracy theory, Karl and David take to their life of cyber-crime like ducks to water. Later a TV network wants to buy their story, and Karl, who has become a coke and speed addict, manages to hack into the security system of a nuclear facility. But he's being followed by cops, and he's increasingly paranoid and out of touch with reality, seeing occult significance in news headlines and secret agents around every corner.

Remember the '80s? People snorted coke on dashboards, Reagan sold weapons to Qaddafi, computers were as big as fridges, and a small brotherhood of geeks with PCs infiltrated the political and economic infrastructure. Based on true events, "23" follows the maze of discovery that made hackers into global terrorists and suggests a terrifying explanation for the Chernobyl disaster. Using lots of claustrophobic slow motion and fuzzed edges, Schmid crafts a slice of history so surreal it seems a fairy tale -- and so plausible it must surely be our future.

-- Peg Aloi