2004 / cinema
SF elements
robots, Asimov's three laws of robotics
Review
![[walking with robots]](calvin.jpg "[walking with robots]")
It's
about 30 years in the future, and robots are omnipresent, acting as
general home helps and dogsbodies, made safe by the Three Laws
hard-wired into their positronic brains. Will Smith plays a cop who is
nevertheless paranoid about them, believing them capable of harm. He
gets called to the apparent suicide of a senior scientist at USR,
major manufacturers of the robots, on the eve of a big launch of a new
model. His investigations, helped by robot psychologist Dr Susan
Calvin [Bridget Moynahan], uncover that a robot may have murdered the
scientist, and then lead to something even more sinister.
![[hunting a robot]](robot.jpg "[hunting a robot]")
If this is to be judged as being based on Asimov's Robot books, then it is a travesty. But even the film credits don't go that far, merely claiming it to be "suggested by" the books. On that basis, then this isn't half bad. There's a mostly plausible plot, snappy dialogue, tongue-in-cheek references to some of the plot absurdities, exciting action scenes, big guns, and hordes of lovingly-rendered robots. And the moral of the tale is: beware of allowing your robot to be in constant contact with its manufacturer, with patches to its behaviour constantly downloadable.
Rating: 3
[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]