I knew it would be one of those humanity-on-the-brink-of-disaster movies which end up totally creeping me out because the plot seems too plausible. :-( I mean, it is supposed to be happening sometime in the future like year 2156 or something like that but the rate at which the world is hurtling towards one disaster or another, it looks entirely possible in the next decade or so.
The reason for the earth's destruction in this movie is the solar flares - which have managed to clear out about 99% of the population. The surviving humanity has built robots to help it live in this world. These robots have 2 basic protocols in their bio-kernel (whatever that means!) - one, they cannot harm any form of life and two, they cannot modify themselves. But the desertification has relentlessly marched on and the robots have becomes little more than manual laborers.
Jacq Vaucan (Anthonio Banderas in a bald avatar!) is an insurance investigator for a company manufacturing these robots. He is investigating a claim that a police officer shot a robot because it was caught in the act of modifying itself. Jacq suspects that someone somewhere is illegally modifies the robots. His boss finds it hard to believe but nevertheless tells Jacq that he will authorize his transfer to an area near the ocean if he can find the proof. The rest of the movie is about Jacq's search for the elusive 'Clocksmith' and the choices that he has to make.
The whole movie has a grey depressing look that is common to these Armageddon genre movies. I wondered why Jacq's wife wanted to bring a child in this sorry miserable world where people had to think hard to remember what an ocean looked like. I ended up feeling sorry for the robots instead of the humans. Two images that will forever remain seared in my memory are that of a legless robot trying to cross the road and saying 'your wish is my command' as the corrupt officer Wallace yells at him to speed it up and a robot, sitting with his penniless owner, saying over and over again 'Please sir, my owner is hungry'. :-(
Definitely not a good movie to start your new year with but then definitely a movie that makes you wonder (for the nth time!) if this indeed is the future that is in store for the humanity :-(
The reason for the earth's destruction in this movie is the solar flares - which have managed to clear out about 99% of the population. The surviving humanity has built robots to help it live in this world. These robots have 2 basic protocols in their bio-kernel (whatever that means!) - one, they cannot harm any form of life and two, they cannot modify themselves. But the desertification has relentlessly marched on and the robots have becomes little more than manual laborers.
Jacq Vaucan (Anthonio Banderas in a bald avatar!) is an insurance investigator for a company manufacturing these robots. He is investigating a claim that a police officer shot a robot because it was caught in the act of modifying itself. Jacq suspects that someone somewhere is illegally modifies the robots. His boss finds it hard to believe but nevertheless tells Jacq that he will authorize his transfer to an area near the ocean if he can find the proof. The rest of the movie is about Jacq's search for the elusive 'Clocksmith' and the choices that he has to make.
The whole movie has a grey depressing look that is common to these Armageddon genre movies. I wondered why Jacq's wife wanted to bring a child in this sorry miserable world where people had to think hard to remember what an ocean looked like. I ended up feeling sorry for the robots instead of the humans. Two images that will forever remain seared in my memory are that of a legless robot trying to cross the road and saying 'your wish is my command' as the corrupt officer Wallace yells at him to speed it up and a robot, sitting with his penniless owner, saying over and over again 'Please sir, my owner is hungry'. :-(
Definitely not a good movie to start your new year with but then definitely a movie that makes you wonder (for the nth time!) if this indeed is the future that is in store for the humanity :-(
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment