Review: Transcendence

The directorial debut of Wally Pfister is simply ok. The trailer for this was good, and certainly got me interested. In the end, it just failed to excite me. This should have been a big techno thriller, instead, we've got some interesting tech but no thrills.

Johnny Depp is technological genius Will Caster. The man that wants to bring Artificial Intelligence to the world because he believes we can benefit as a race. He's opposed by a group of rebels that think his ideas are going too far. They shoot him and bomb some major facilities involved in this development of the A.I. tech. Depp survives, but the bullet was laced with a radioactive substance - so he doesn't have long to live. His distressed and equally as gifted wife wants to keep his dream alive - and the only way to do this is to upload Will's mind to the A.I. machine.

This all starts out pretty good, with some interesting discussions on how far to go with our tech being raised. The performances are decent. Some may complain that Depp is ringing it in, and in a way, I can see that, but it also seems plausible to me that the way he portrays the character is how the character should be. Rebecca Hall plays his ever faithful wife, and she is pretty good. Paul Bettany is also pretty decent as the long life friend of both. The supporting cast are ok. They don't really have much to work with script wise. It's almost like Wally called some mates he's worked with before to fill out the cast.

The story is interesting, however it is the way it is executed that is the let down. The film looks great, as you would expect of Christopher Nolan's long time DP, but there is just no solid substance behind this glossy surface. The reasons for character's actions are not entirely acceptable or representative of the real world, and yet this film is about tech in our current real world. It seems decisions are made just to get the film to the next stage of the story without the indepth examination what is happening and its real world impact.

This is a movie you could watch once and may enjoy, but not feel the need to revisit again.

Rating:

2.5 out of 5.