Entertaining, but could have been a little more intelligent

Rating: 6/10 (8 August 2004)

I wasn't too sure about what to expect with this movie. Overall, it wasn't too bad a film in itself. (SOME SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW..)
Here are some of my views:
The special effects were very effective and enjoyable. The acting was convincing enough overall and the movie moved at a reasonable pace. In it's own right, this for me was an "OK" movie!
It started to collapse for me into a run-of-the-mill action flick after the first 20 minutes. Asimov's three laws were well and truly dispensed with within minutes by a simple flick of a switch in the NS5, not by the usual intriguing convolutions employed by the inspired author of "Little Lost Robot". Anyone familiar with Asimov would know that most of his USR&MM books dealt with the pitfalls of the three laws. I can't recall the title, but I remember one of Asimov's books actually dealt quite skillfully with a murder by a robot.
Dr. Susan Calvin was not the rather plain, complex woman she is in the books (e.g. read Asimov's "Liar"). Are we too scared to allow characters like this in movies? When Dr. Calvin started firing machine guns it just didn't work for me!!
The rampaging robots scene in the tunnel was a little too much! Surely, even with his advantages (see the movie!), Del Spooner would have been wasted by 50+ NS5 robots and two very large intelligent transporters intent on killing him!! Same with the final action scene (oh, please!)
The film does raise the point about the three laws that is important. Law 1 states that a robot cannot harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. This would cause a paradox to a robot if the owner was, say, a smoker. Inaction would mean the robot is allowing the human to come to harm by smoking. Action would harm the human by denying a craving. Balance would have to be addressed. Also the perception of what "harm" is
The Spooner/Sarah choice by the NS4 tries to show this paradox and balance method, and the consequences of such choices.
One question that should be raised in line with this film is, if we were to create robots to effectively become slaves, why provide them with sentience at all? Surely sentient robots are equivalent to humans, only mechanical, not biological. Built for purpose machines are slaves by design, slaves to their programming, and to their owners. Should they have awareness of self, conscious of anything beyond their design parameters?
I'd give the film a 5.5/10. It could have been so much more intelligent, but maybe this would have bored people who don't go to the movies to be thoughtfully provoked. A lot of the action sequences were a little OTT, but the film definitely entertained.