An Under Appreciated Sci-Fi

Rating: 9/10 (15 September 2009)

Will Smith plays his typical cocky, yet morally correct action hero that does everything well and vindicates himself cleverly against people who judge him in this action/sci-fi film. I think his character is the main source of this film's failure to be a blockbuster, not because he doesn't pull it off, but because people don't want to see Will Smith in the role of Detective Del Spooner. I have not read the I,Robot novel, but I have heard that it was written in the form of several short stories, which the film attempted to mesh together into one storyline. Whether or not this fusion was well done or not I am not equipped to decide, but watched as a film separate from the stories is a bit of a masterpiece.
The main reason I advocate this movie seemingly against popular opinion is not of the main character Detective Spooner, but the supporting character and the personal robot of Dr. Lanning, Sonny. This character is like only one other I've seen: Hellboy's Abe Sapien. Sonny is naive to human psychology, foreign to human habits and quirks, and is the opposite of street-wise. He is a robot that has nothing more to him than any other robot, except somewhat of a human soul. Much like Abe Sapien, Sonny is intelligent and a quick learner, and does not think highly of fighting. Much of Sonny's thought process is based only on things in life that other people are moving too fast to consider. He is thinking about dreams while Detective Spooner is running around trying to solve a mystery. This seems to me to be a naive wisdom that I relate to, and that I find very rarely in a character.
Finally, I couldn't do a review of I,Robot without recalling some of its unique fight scenes. From the truck-car-truck fight in the tunnels to the nano - bots - up - in - the - air one-shot fight, and even the collapsing building escape, the action scenes in this movie are much more original than movies with equal or even greater popularity. The camera angles, including the corkscrew - around - the - character - running - across - a - bridge and the orbit - the - character - in - the - opposite - direction - as - they're - swinging - around - the - pole are sickeningly unique techniques, and for some just sickening.
The problem is, the people who would enjoy this type of movie are the same people who don't want to see more of Will Smith. If more people were to give him a fair chance in this role or just look past him if they really can't bring themselves to accept him, I think they would find a truly classic movie in I,Robot.