A Cyberpunk Comeback

Rating: 8/10 (22 August 2004)

The list of silver screen gems "suggested" by originally enshrined literary works goes on a ways and ushers in quite the tinseltown fiasco on more than a few occasions.
Luckily, Alex Proyas (of venerable The Crow and Dark City fame) makes good use of Asimov's Robot series as inspiration, veering away from its often dreary technicalities but remaining faithful enough to serve up a truly significant homage.
At its core, Proyas' rendition revolves around the author's well-known three laws of robotics. These set-in-positronic-silicon tenets regulate robot behavior, relegating the mechanical aids to appliance status while making certain they remain tame. However, in a somewhat exaggerated and over-projected 2035 Chicago, robotics' neglected gray areas threaten to create a stir when a new class of machine, the NS5, goes to market with perhaps too much AI for its own good.
Detective Spooner (Will Smith) enters the fray once a suspicious murder takes place within the very hallowed halls where synthetic intelligence emerges, or super-corporation US Robotics (wasn't that a real company once?). Spooner's mentor and friend, robot-design pioneer Dr. Lanning, meets a mysteriously grisly end with very little for the police to go on, immediately raising blaring alarms in Spooner's jaded mind. His investigation, helped along by at-first cynically doubtful scientist Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), brings him and the entire city into direct contest with powerful interests and other unforeseen cybernetic woes.
Despite liberally frolicking around in Asimov's seminal source material. I, Robot succeeds with flying colors, mostly as a consequence of being respectful and paying true tribute to previous triumphs in the genre, like Blade Runner. Will Smith's accomplished performance delivers a sardonic, old-fashioned street smart cop caught in situations where his gut feelings and pure instincts work better than all the high-tech gizmos in the universe. His persona reflects that of Harrison Ford's Deckard almost to a tee, and he carries the same gun, to boot. Additionally, both IR and BR deal with the thin line separating thinking machine and human, as well as feature main heroes with more links to their alleged artificial adversaries than meet the eye. Other bonds between the two include nods to Blade Runner's unparalleled futurism (note the similar-looking cop cars), and a robot foe with the potential to become good.
All in all, though, I. Robot still insists on being a summer hit, thus imbuing itself with modifications like CGI-laden action sequences that come across as OK but not much beyond, stereotypical characters such as the comforting but bellowingly bossy police captain (Chi McBride), and gross brand placement. To wit, every car 30 years hence will be an Audi.
But don't take these as major complaints. For a big budget, middle of the cinema deal, IR works wonders within its glossy confines, providing audiences with a compelling anecdote of a tale. While the film's near-future postulation may be over-the-top a la Minority Report's unlikely tech-utopia, it still manages to convey believable characters surrounded by dazzling visuals minus the plasticity now so intimately associated with computer graphics-reliant projects. Next to many of its prefab contemporaries, I, Robot shines through gloriously.
Definitely not as grimy as Ridley Scott's 1982 watershed achievement, the Asimov-guided movie falters hardly ever in depicting various shades of tomorrow's city life and technology's various side-effects, all properly watered-down for PG-13 crowds but still thought-provoking to a large degree. As we said before, things need to be taken in perspective. Blade Runner was primo art house edginess, while IR stands as one of 2004's biggest summer chart toppers. Even so, it's remarkably thrilling and leads the way for (hopefully) other, grander efforts aimed at reviving big-screen cyberpunk.
Rating: * * * 1/2