China and ‘The West’ are embroiled in a cold war which can only be ended, military bosses say, by putting all their resources into producing an assassin who can infiltrate China. Tech expert Vincent (Toby Stephens) is running a programme to find or make this assassin for the MOD but finds that people at the top are extremely unscrupulous. Who would have guessed?! To add insult to injury, the assassin they end up with does not turn out to be the assassin they’d particularly wanted.
Films about artificial intelligence always seem to focus on our fear of our technology becoming sentient, with a side order of what it means to be human. Getting the usual comparisons out of the way; Blade Runner (1982), Terminator 2 (1991) and I, Robot (2004) all contain similar themes. But in most of these films, the general rule for this technology is that it is way more violent than we puny humans want it to be. The Machine appears to be a tangent of the usual technology-based philosophy, in that the bad guys want their artificial intelligence to be, well, much less intelligent and way more fighty.
The Machine has the appearance of the female terminator in T3: Rise of the Machines (2003) alongside the whiny know-it-all insistent nature of Johnny 5 in Short Circuit (1986). This approach is certainly novel but in some scenes it doesn’t quite work. This coupled with the slightly B-Movie feel and over the top score threatens to downgrade the impact of other more insightful aspects of the narrative. The script/direction only really allows for the character development of the Machine (played by Caity Lotz), leaving Toby Stephens with a lacklustre characterisation. At times when he is meant to be filled with passion he just seems a bit annoyed and thin-lipped.
Caradog James’ sci-Fi/thriller is a fun watch with some exciting and very much unexpected moments. It also firms up the notion that our obsession with artificial intelligence going rogue is definitely a comment on our baser natures. The Machine joins Spike Jonze’s Her in the theatrical releases of 2014 folder marked ‘artificial intelligence with lofty ambitions’.
Maryann has awarded The Machine (2013) three Torches of Truth
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