Luke Gibson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) lives in a world that doesn't appear too differently from ours, or at least a world of our not unforeseeable future. It's a world dominated by corporations, advertisements, violence, and technology. No, this isn't an anti-technology flick, and I'm not planning on writing an anti-tech rant, but it is one of the latest in a wave of "be careful with control" stories hitting theaters.

I'd suggest that lovers of The Matrix or any of those futuristic conspiracy theory movies (Dark City, Minority Report come to mind) will be entertained, but some of the morality here questions more than just awake/asleep, aware/medicated, etc. Gibson lives in a pretty self-absorbed world that gets squashed easily by big business, and by governmental farming out. What happens when the world you know gets ripped away from you and replaced by something outside of your control?

Gibson awakes after an accident with an implant in his brain that controls the voices in his head. But these voices aren't the kinds of things that require spiritual exorcisms. Instead, they're the voices of actors selling products. See, Hope Industries has saved Gibson's life by providing this nanotechnology for his use, but the offsetting negative is that they can control what he says. And there's the minor side effect that the chip can make your brain explode if you become too self-aware or interested in avoiding the advertisements.

Enter the underground group led by Michael Ironside which hopes to upset Hope Industries' power network by finding a champion. Gibson's SEAL training and the fact that he had a wife and unborn child make him the perfect specimen. Of course, this leads to some unwillingness on his part as he's ping-ponged back and forth between the two groups that are both using him for a while, before his rage and loss wakes him to the negative impact of the implant's control.

What we end up watching is the growth of one man who realizes that the world is not all about him. We experience the power of a group of insurgents against the overwhelming forces of evil, of oppression, and of big business. The movie's politics run against government control, against selling out to make a buck, and against our passive buy-in to whatever is being grossly presented to us. Hardwired doesn't bash technology; it bashes us for abdicating our responsibility to someone else.

In the end, the "gospel" of Hardwired demands that we take a stand against the forces of principalities and evils in the world; that we wake up from the world in which we slumber and bounce passively along on the waves; and that we register our own need to make the world of others better even if we see no benefit to ourselves. In the end, Gibson liberates himself from his new "worldview" and saves others as well, but realizes that, until everyone's worldview becomes one, there will always be a battle between good and evil.