The Machine by Caradog w. James on Netflix
My rating: ⭐ Crap
Two artificial intelligence engineers come together as they work to create the first ever self-aware artificial intelligence. A veteran AI engineer secretly hopes to develop technology to help his diseased daughter, even if it means funding comes from he powerful Ministry of Defence (MoD). His new partner, a young woman gifted in the field of AI, is brought on after her breakthroughs are recognized by the MoD. Things go wrong when the MoD takes over and advances the researchers’ work to the next level, teaching the AI to kill and follow MoD instructions with its new and nearly indestructible body.
I stumbled over this movie when casually browsing the Netflix catalog yesterday. The plot is fairly unoriginal one but it is one I would probably have liked it, if it would have been well implemented. Sadly it was not. It was not even a half arsed implementation. I am at loss to understand how this disappointing movie can hold a rating at 6.1 at IMDb at the time of me writing this.
The movie is quite a low budget one. I can live with that. It is also quite dark. I can live with that as well. Unfortunately I found it to be a slow, boring, illogical and stupid mess. Of course it portrays the MoD as the stupid, arrogant and lying bad guys. No surprise there when it comes to most moviemaking today. Been there, seen that. Wasn’t fun the first time.
The implementation of the plot is also just poor with lots of stupidity and plot holes. These potentially dangerous people seem to some times be locked up in cages and sometimes be roaming around pretty freely. The lost speech part is also laughable. The idea that a RD center should not discover that the subjects communicated between themselves is just stupid.
As for the acting it is mediocre at best. Not really bad perhaps but certainly not very good either. It is really a low budget B-movie so this could perhaps have been swallowed but there is really not a single likable character in the entire movie. Almost everyone is an arse one way or another and the cyborg, who could have been interesting, is just… meh.
The majority of the movie is one long, slow and dark ordeal. Once we finally get some action it is pure B-movie style shoot a lot and fuck logic kind of action. The ending? The less said about it the better.
For me this one was a waste of time.
PG's Ramblings 