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| I, Robot |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 114 |
| Public Rating: 8.33 (201 votes) |
Director: Alex Proyas |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: sci-fi, dram, mystery, romance, |
Year: 2004 |
| Writer(s): Jeff Vintar & Akiva Goldsman (screenplay), Jeff Vintar (screen story), suggested by the short stories of Isaac Asimov. |
| Distributor: 20th Century Fox |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Laurence Mark, John Davis, Topher Dow, Wyck Godfrey.
Starring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, Adrian L Rickard, Chi McBride.
Exceptionally fine and seamless CGI is not the only drawcard to this sci-fi thriller directed by the visionary Alex Proyas, who gave us the extraordinary Dark City and The Crow. The film successfully incorporates many genres – spectacular action, romance, and mystery – all on the wide backdrop of a believable Chicago of 2035. Unlike many action dramas where characterisation is sacrificed to a fast-driven plot, here the story of a unique robot who evolves to develop human qualities – possibly even a soul - makes good characterisation an essential requirement. A twisting plot full of red herrings and unexpected developments makes the mystery fully intriguing. As well, absorbing questions about the nature of intelligence and the soul are aired with a result that interestingly brings up more questions. Proyas’ gritty directorial poetry informs the whole.
Isaac Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ are the basis for each of the nine stories in his book I, Robot. They are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Like Asimov’s stories, this film opens with an apparent impossibility – a robot committing a crime against a human being. Will Smith plays Detective Del Spooner, with some traumatic personal history giving him both a prejudice against robots and a conflicted debt. An apparent suicide of a friend, respected cybernetics scientist Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) who worked for the US Robotics Corporation (USR) draws Spooner to the scene of the crime at the awesome USR building. Realistically set among architecture of a much older Chicago, the futuristic USR building dominates the Chicago landscape with an ominous, impossibly vertical height, sheer glass sides and a stories-high statue of a robot in its inner courtyard, under which the shattered body of Dr Lanning portentously lies. Clues to his death are in a nifty holographic projector device, for which Spooner must ‘ask the right questions’.
Spooner meets the slightly hostile head of the USR Corporation, Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), and Dr Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) a robot psychologist against whom Spooner’s antipathy for robots immediately sets the primary antagonistic friction of viewpoints and values helping to drive the plot. She is logical and supposedly unemotional, at home with cutting edge cybernetic technology and enthusiastic about the advantages of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence – such as the omnipresent Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence known as VIKI which is the heart and engine of the USR building.
Spooner, on the other hand, not at all happy with where the automated future appears to be headed, wears Converse sneakers (‘vintage 2004’) and likes ‘old’ music played on a system which is remote-controlled rather than vox-operated. Much of the information we get about this futuristic world, as well as much of the incidental humour, is given in the conflict of values of these two characters. Susan’s immaculate, modern apartment is contrasted against Spooner’s chaotically untidy pad. We get her unbelieving reaction when his music system does not respond to her spoken command ’Play!’, and her horror at his non-automated motorcycle: ‘Don’t tell me this thing runs on gas – don’t you know gas explodes!’ before she nervously hops on as pillion passenger. What is safe to him is dangerous to her, and vice-versa. By the end of the film much of their individual growth has occurred through an intermingling of their values.
Equally potent a character is Sonny, who alone among the phalanxes of thousands of the latest generation NS-5 robots, is uniquely built by his ‘father’, Dr Lanning, with some specific and exciting anomalies and structural differences both in his brain and in the denser alloy of his body. Sonny is both an example and an apparent antidote for the ‘Ghost in the Machine’ theories of the late Dr Lanning. These concern the evolution of robots from artificial to ‘real’ intelligence, the fatal flaw in the Three Laws which will make USR’s Logo ‘Three Laws Safe’ a bitter mockery, and postulate the emergence of fully sentient beings with a soul and an ability to choose their own moral path instead of being infallibly programmed to obey. The question (except in Spooner’s case) of whether humans on the whole have actually achieved this is neatly avoided, no doubt for dramatic purposes.
It appears that Sonny has emotions, and courtesy of actor Alan Tudyk and Dark City’s Production Designer Patrick Tatopoulos in collaboration with Digital Effects wizards John Nelson (Gladiator), John Berton (The Mummy, Men in Black 2), Erik Nash and Andrew Jones these are conveyed with astounding subtlety on the face of this cutting edge CGI creation. There’s a wonderful scene where Sonny, whom we already like for his openness and nobility, is being interrogated for the murder of Dr Lanning. Immediately following his emphatically angry denial (which puts dents in the table) there’s a swift chase of conflicting emotions on his face, realisation at what he’s just done and how that appears, and then doubt, which turns him inward – ‘Maybe I did cause his death,’ he says, aghast at the thought, ‘He was happy. Maybe it was something I did?’ It’s so utterly without guile, and so human-like, that Spooner is confounded, his prejudices as well as his cop’s instincts challenged.
Unlike Sonny, the other NS-5s convey an unavoidable impression of ants, both in the regimented lines they form standing to blank attention, and in articulated action swarming over the exterior of the USR building at a climactic moment.
The simple colour coding device of Sonny’s blue eyes and blue heart visible through his transparent chest distinguishes him from the yellow/green-eyed, red-hearted NS-5s under the central control of their evil mastermind. In contrast, the slightly scruffy, superseded NS-4s with their simple, honest faces (vaguely reminiscent of C3PO) – especially when we see them relegated to their storage container ghetto with its political undertones of an outcast and disenfranchised poverty class - helps enrich a superb robot battle scene with perhaps far more sympathy than when the hopelessly underpowered humans attempt a mass resistance, ending up running for their lives.
Visually stunning in concept and also on the screen are the underground, fully automated transport tunnels where vehicles with 360 degree wheels travel at speeds inadvisable for manual control. And the very cool parking arrangements! Just make sure you don’t leave anything lying loose on the seat of your car!
There is an interesting degree of product placement: Audi of course deserves acknowledgement for the beautifully sleek futuristic vehicle Will Smith rides in (only when trying to demonstrate the superiority of human reflexes does he actually drive it himself), and among others JVC and Converse are featured – the latter as a kind of in-joke pointing to Spooner’s personality.
The core mystery of the film – who killed Dr Lanning and why - is unravelled gradually without telegraphing the final revelation. The clues Spooner must uncover are uniquely accessible to a man with his particular emotional programming, and the parallels are subtly made.
For the most part, the anomalies of the latest technologies juxtaposed against the decaying buildings, graffiti and slum-like environments that are Proyas’ trade-mark are pleasingly realistic. Only on a couple of occasions are the discrepancies a little obviously dramatically intentioned to be credible – one where asthma medicine appears not to have caught up with nanotechnology, and another where a terrifying car chase in a tunnel has Spooner’s vehicle bracketed by two enormous USR bus transports, which could crush his car with overwhelming ease, but which instead veer into a much more tension-ridden scenario with a less predictable outcome involving human ingenuity and resourcefulness.
A much broader question involves nanotechnology itself, which, fifty years after Asimov’s writings, has far greater potential in artificial intelligence to be realised now than the gross mechanics of robotics – but this is perhaps unimportant. The emotional impact of this story and the basis of its appeal largely derives from the concept - and fear - of machines taking over our lives. The human story, the coming together of two very different people, and their personal growth due to their interaction are achieved elegantly and with originality due to the presence of Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan. No less compelling is the portrayal of the virtual adolescence and manhood of Sonny, while the action, the battles and car chases are thrilling. Memorable too is the portentous soundtrack by acclaimed, multi award-winning composer Marco Beltrami.
The final and overweening tone of the film is positive and hopeful. Interestingly, it doesn’t overtly suggest a sequel, in which a similar, even darker scenario could arise through the direct consequences of this one.
© Avril Carruthers, 17th July, 2004
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