I, Robot

I, Robot is an adaptation of the Isaac Asimov stories in the same way that an Apple Macintosh might contribute to your five a day fruits. It does explore a handful of his ideas, mainly the three laws of robotics, and by explore I mean mention. As a big budget sci fi starring Will Smith I wasn't exactly expecting a dry essay on post humanist thought, but I had hoped for a little more than a CGI robot brawl.

It raises questions that while interesting in isolation, it's just not equipped to answer and then gets on with the shooty crashy explosive business of the bog standard actioner. Smith plays a homicide detective who hates technology and robots to a degree that would have made him look as insane as everyone in the movie assumes he is every day prior to the one in which he happens to be right. Far from being endearing his technophobia borders upon farce. He spends much of the film investigating a suicide that turns out to be a suicide and stumbles across a plot twist you could see coming from moment it's players were introduced.

Arguably I suppose introducing some intellect into a film that would otherwise have been very simple and straightforward is a good thing, and I've certainly seen worse action films, but the mixture of high and low ideas is most frustrating. The reasoning behind the antagonists plot is clever while the manner in which they are defeated is massively daft. It sways between the two states, flaunting it's failed potential throughout.