Review: Automata

Filmed in Bulgaria and set in 2044 where most of humanity has been erased due to huge solar flares. Antonio Banderas plays an insurance agent for a big robotics company, but the dire living circumstances have seen robots built with a certain cost-effective, low-tech in mind. Robots have been configured to help humanity in their day-to-day lives, but also making sure that they can’t repair themselves (or each other), as well as the standard Asimovian condition that they never harm human beings. However, one such robot is indeed believed to have broken the ‘Thou shalt not repair thyself’ commandment and it’s up to Banderas (whose wife Birgitte Hjort Sorensen is about to pop out a baby) to investigate. See, if a robot can repair itself, chances are it’s capable of improving its intellectual capacity. When that happens, it’s plausible (if not probable) that they might just want to say ‘nah, fuck that’ to not harming humans. Banderas visits a ‘clockmaker’ (played by that great player of cinematic intellectuals, Melanie Griffith) who has a sex robot (!) that seems to be able to repair itself. And that’s when the film takes a turn best discovered for yourself. Or not. I’d go with not, because SPOILER ALERT the film sucks. Robert Forster plays Banderas’ boss, David Ryall plays Forster’s boss, and Dylan McDermott plays a somewhat antagonistic cop sent after Banderas when the latter goes missing.

 

Cheapjack 2014 sci-fi flick is a rip-off of “Blade Runner”, “I, Robot”, and “A.I.” (the first two especially), and you’d swear it was the handiwork of hack director Albert Pyun (“Cyborg”, “Omega Doom”) working for the Cannon Group. Nope, it’s Spanish director and FX guy Gabe Ibanez at the helm (in his second feature-length effort), co-writing the plagiaristic script with Igor Legarreta and Javier Sanchez Donate, and made for Millennium Films (Pretty much the modern equivalent of Cannon, or as someone over at ‘Good Efficient Butchery’ calls them, a ‘Cannon cover band’. Damn, I wish I’d have come up with that one!). It’s a depressingly boring, sluggishly paced and distressingly unoriginal hack-job (the pathetic Michael Crichton ‘rogue robots’ thriller “Runaway” is another obvious influence here), with a glum and miscast (and bald) Antonio Banderas to match, seemingly inspired by Harrison Ford’s glum performance and miscasting in “Blade Runner”. Like that overrated Ridley Scott film, it’s no fun at all. Unlike that overrated Ridley Scott film, it doesn’t feature Rutger Hauer or Edward James Olmos (it does have Robert Forster essentially in the M. Emmet Walsh role, however), and the visual design looks like something created on an Apple II. The cityscape may look like a micro-budget “Blade Runner” (hideous green-screen work), but I liked the film’s rather low-tech future idea, sort of a shitbox “I, Robot” where they can’t afford truly hi-tech robots. Sadly, the film itself is a shitbox “I, Robot”, and “I, Robot” wasn’t much chop to begin with.

 

Banderas must’ve seriously needed the cash, because this is terrible and the normally charming actor looks miserable. But this kind of role just isn’t his thing, for starters all the technical mumbo-jumbo doesn’t mesh well with a thick Spanish accent. Dylan McDermott, meanwhile, adopts a Clint Eastwood rasp and wears sunglasses to try and hide his hatred for himself. He sounds like an idiot and isn’t fooling anyone. As for Melanie Griffith (who was presumably still with Banderas at the time), she looks cryogenically frozen. Botox has rendered an already terrible actress even worse at her chosen craft. The idea of automatons eventually gaining enough power and intelligence to become wholly independent, was done a lot better in “Her”. This one’s a standard issue ‘robot paranoia’ take, and deathly dull.

 

If not the worst film of 2014, this is certainly the most miserable. The low-tech robots are somewhat interesting, the film itself is a derivative, cheap-looking, glum slog with unhappy performances from actors who ought not be here. And a frozen Melanie Griffith. The whole thing broods itself into a coma and a bald-headed, glum Banderas seems to be playing a role intended for Jason Statham or Luke Goss (Final thought: Is Antonio Banderas set to become the new Rutger Hauer? If you take out “Puss in Boots”, their career paths have taken on somewhat similar trajectories. Sure, Banderas rarely plays villains and is a weaker actor than Hauer, but the comparisons are there and rather scary. Take more care in your career choices, Antonio!).

 

Rating: D