Review of The Machine (2013) by Tony C — 08 Apr 2014

It is such a relief to see an honest to god B-movie these days. A film with a somewhat flawed script, limited budget, tons of vision and the balls to take itself seriously.

The machine is about a future where elite scientists are able to re-animate the dead into powerful robot bodies, or graft advanced thought-controlled prosthetics onto the living. The robot's intelligence is the final hurdle, trying to make a subject that is both intelligent and entirely controllable. One of our protagonists is a scientist hoping to bring back his daughter as a machine. He's working with a mysterious corporation to achieve that goal. The rest of the movie is the movie.

If this sounds like a cheesy predictable premise, it is. But many many productions would take this story and do far less with it.

The Machine understands why Sci-fi was so vivid and memorable in the 70's and 80's, it's about art. Bold, heavily featured, skillfully realized art design-much of which here is brought to life through skillful practical effects. It really shows. Things feel real. Sets feel real, violence feels real, CGI is used well and, as the case should always be, doesn't draw undue attention to itself. It also has a fantastic synth-score that gets that synth-scores weren't great because they were cheesy, they were great because they were cold, otherworldly and isolating. Also that the good ones kicked ass.

In the final act, the Machine does what B-genre films do and turned into a gun-fight; but who cares, I'd already seen a good film.

I'm not sure what it was trying to say about artificial intelligence. It was sort of about innocence and sort of about man's inhumanity to man, sort of about procreation and creation. In the end it was mostly about kicking and punching. But it doesn't really matter if a movie wraps things up in a neat package. As long as it presents a premise, gives that premise a little room to breathe, and presents you with bold iconic imagery, I'm in.