Review of Automata (2014) by Luca B — 14 Aug 2016

A decent watch, but a lot of missed potential. Automata is kind of a sci-fi mixed with noir kind of film. I found it closely related to Blade Runner (1982), but just not hitting the heights that wonderful hit.

The film is set in the future where the entire world was almost destroyed. The humans built robots to help them build structures and basically get back on track. Many years have passed and the world has taken a few steps back.

Most robots are seen in a very distasteful light. Jacq Valucan (Antonio Banderas) is a insurance agent for the ROC Robotics. He is investigating a robot that had overridden its programming and started to fix itself and make modifications.

The ramifications from this could lead to them going past their other key protocol which is not harming humans. Jacqs investigation leads him through a much bigger scenario then he ever could have imagined from a huge cover up to much much more.

The film has a good premise, but I felt because it was a low budget film ($15 million) it just couldn't expand on it as much as it could have. We don't see much other than a few buildings and some CGi backdrops for the most part.

The robots themselves are animatronics and look fantastic. The real dropping point still is the story over all. It's very convoluted and takes about 50 minutes in to actually figure out what the whole point really is.

Regardless when it's revealed who's behind everything and why its happening it just doesn't make too much sense. Not to mention the film has one of the most over the top characters in Sean Wallace (Dylan McDermott) a cop who hates robots and just cusses and is over the top violent.

..for no freaking reason?! It's never explained and his character just comes off super cheesy. He's barely in the movie, but when he is it just messes with the overall flow. Banderas actually does a pretty good job here and by the end I actually enjoyed his character.

This one is a slow burner that won't be for everyone, but for anyone interested in the trailer I would say give it a look!