Ever
thought Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were too complicated? Happily, the ROC
robotics corporation has distilled them down two prime directives. Essentially,
all robots are hardwired to cause no harm and never alter themselves in any
way. However, there seem to be a handful of rogue ‘bots, self-repairing and
maybe even self-upgrading. An insurance investigator slowly starts to suspect
singularity may really be nigh in Gabe Ibáñez’s Automata (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.
By
the year 2044, an environmental catastrophe and its radioactive aftermath have
killed over ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population. Yet, enough people
are still paying premiums without filing claims to keep Jacq Vaucan’s insurance
company in business. ROC is their bread and butter client, so every nocturnal day,
Vaucan goes out to debunk claims of robot wrong-doings. Frankly, it is easy work,
because the First Protocol is ironclad (and people are idiots). Supposedly, the
same is true of the Second Protocol, but Vaucan’s investigation turns up a
maintenance robot that was reportedly healing itself before the crookedest cop
in Oceania blew it away.
Before
long, the trail of self-aware robots leads Vaucan to a “clockmaker” in the
forbidden zone, who inadvertently awakens a sexbot, before company goons crash
the party. Not exactly the sharpest sonic-screwdriver in the Tardis, Vaucan
does not realize his own people are out to get him, but since the First
Protocol is still in force, the newly sentient robots drag him through the
desert to temporary safety in a ridiculously overlong sequence that cries out
for the MST3K treatment (think “rock-climbing”
in Lost Continent).
Sure,
one might say Automata “owes a debt”
to Bladerunner, but it still has the palpable
feel of a lived in world teetering on the brink of anarchy. Yet, it is also
happens to be one of those strangely contradictory genre films that uses the
specter of A.I. run amok to scare the willies out viewers during the set-up,
but lectures us in the third act that we have had this coming all along for our
environmental naughtiness and should therefore willingly resign ourselves to
extinction and just toss the keys to the planet to our stoner roommate’s Xbox.
Perhaps, I am paraphrasing a little, but the point is it gets preachy, in an
apocalyptic way.
Nevertheless,
Antonio Banderas does his moody hardboiled thing with authority as a Vaucan.
Likewise, the Robert Forster is reliably flinty as Vaucan boss, Bob Bold.
Melanie Griffith is not wildly convincing as the underground robot tinkerer,
but hats off for the professionalism she and Banderas show in their scenes
together, considering recent events. The rest of the ensemble looks like they
wandered in from the Network 23 boardroom in the old Max Headroom show.
