MOVIE REVIEW : ‘WIRED TO KILL’

In the chic, violent, synth-pop-throbbing world of “Wired to Kill” (citywide) we are in the projected near future of Los Angeles where terror and techno-pop reign in a twin dictatorship. A mysterious plague has wiped out half the population. The other half has evolved into a curious parody.

Chaos reigns. Scum lurk in the alleys, psychopaths brazenly swagger down the streets. Murderous vermin crash through the windows of our homes, throttle and sneer at us and kill or maim our mothers and grandmothers. Then they’re released into society by a bungling, bureaucratic mess of a system to sneer and kill some more. Can anything this epidemic of senseless slaughter? Only more slaughter and senselessness.

Such is the message of “Wired to Kill” (MPAA-rated: R), one more of those chic revenge thrillers in which clean-limbed photogenic heroes and heroines--beleaguered by predatory criminal scum--take up the bloody ax and bring it crashing down.

Writer-director Franky Schaeffer has some artistic and intellectual pretensions--which tend to make his message even more unsavory. Devin Hoelscher plays the hero, Emily Longstreth the heroine, Merritt Buttrick the villain.