Visually beautiful to look at but flawed

Rating: 7/10 (22 August 2013)

The movie looked much better than I expected. The set design and special effects were for the most part well executed. The main villain Kruger was unintentionally? funny.
By the way he doesn't have a speech impediment that is a South African accent but it was definitely played up on the parody scale. What I liked about the movie is it seemed to be paying homage to the first terminator film in very many ways and that was a plus.
It looks like in the end the team wanting to make it an action movie won out and I suspect that the fights etc. are better than average but I don't watch action movies and so I can't make that comparison.
I find all of the shooting and grunting tedious and pointless would have liked the story to have more heft.
There were a few moments when the film struggled to make a more emotional connection and I would have liked more of those.
Jodie Foster really just has a cameo role that could have been played by any sleep walker. I imagine the script notes said "act wooden" and that would have covered all of her scenes.
As for the idea that they could simply reboot the space station (core code) and change the "law" it is so simple anyone can understand that but at the same time it is profoundly stupid for anyone who knows about coding.
Still if you like action movies this is worth seeing and for the bad guy (Kruger) hamming it up furiously he was so bad he was good.