Two scientists come together in their love of building computer artificial intelligences with military money to build the bestest one they could without falling too much in love. Hollywood has had a fascination with the singularity, and this is their latest take on it. I can't say that it was all bad.
Toby Stephens is the guy who wants to get consciousness into computers so he can put a human consciousness into them as well. His daughter has an illness that prevents her brain from working correctly, so he wants to use the technology that he is developing to make her well again. He plays the role well, although the interaction with the AI that he helps to create is a little too much on the proud father side of things and not enough on the detached scientist side.
Caity Lotz is the rule-breaking scientist who would never have passed a background check to make it into the restricted military scientific R&D base that she has to work on in the first place. She then decides to break protocol a few times, and she somehow manages to get through the crack staff of guards and security systems here at the high-security military facility where they do human experimentation. Not coincidentally, she also plays the robot with the AI installed on it.
There are periphery characters that I could go into, but none of them are especially interesting. The main dynamic is between the robot and Toby - that's why they are the two on the poster. The thing is that the story hinges on a particular break in the storyline where something will happen that we, the audience, don't see coming. The reason we don't see it coming is because we understand how thought works and how personalities work. If you do something completely incongruous with your natural tendencies, it is unexpected. If you go from being a playful puppy to a fighting dog in the blink of an eye, it kind of makes things go a little sideways.
I also have a problem with the idea that a single person could have been the ONLY ONE who has the necessary knowledge to build a complete robot that could pass for human from scratch and also deal with the software, and there is no one else on the damn base who has any understanding of it. It seems very Hollywood to believe that crap.
Acting was very good
Effects were very good
Story was good
Dialog was mostly good
Direction was good
3.25/5