I, Robot - FIlm review & Summary

 

 

“Laws are made to be broken” 

This statement comes from a famous American film, I, Robot. Have you watched the movie? 

I, Robot is a film adapted from a novel by Isaac Asimov entitled I, Robot. Directed by Alex Proyas and produced by 20^th Century Fox, this film has sci-fi, mystery and action genres. I, Robot was released in the end of 2004 with 2035 set. This film won BET Award as the Top Box Office Films on ASCAP Film and Television Music Award 2005 and got 13 nominations such as the best achievement in visual effects in Academy Awards, USA 2005. ¹

I, Robot is an unpredictable-tightening film that tells a story about the world in the future where robots are common assistants and workers for their human owners. The robots are created with 3 laws. First, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second, a robot must obey given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law. Third, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection doesn’t conflict with the first or the second law.

Begins with a scene of a daily-life of a robotophobic cop; Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) who gets a task from a dead man; Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) from a small holographic projector. He has to find the reason why would Dr. Alfred Lanning kill himself? This is when the mystery is begun. To find it, Spooner meets Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), a CEO of USR (United States Robotics) who introduce him to a robo-psychologist; Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan).

Amazement of looking at the existence of the robots, their visual effect looks extremely realistic. Combination of their moves, talking way is well fused. As appearance of Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk); a NS-5 robot whom Det. Spooner and Dr. Calvin found while searching for the mystery. This had been created to against the 3 laws. Suspecting Sonny, since the robot is the one hiding in the room where Dr. Lanning let himself fell down, Det. Spooner interrogates the robot, but the robot remains silent. Dealing with this, it makes us forget that it is just computer scenes anyway.

Det. Spooner goes to DR. Lanning’s house to find more information. He finds a demolition robot which is scheduled to demolish the house at 8 AM next morning, he also finds a recording when Dr. Lanning states that there are possible “ghost in the machine” and one day, robots will have secrets and dreams. Soon after he realized that there is a same sensor strip with the same one as in the USR in Dr. Lanning’s house, a tightening scene plays; the robot suddenly changes the demolish schedule from 8 AM to 8 PM with Det. Spooner still inside the house.

As stated before that this is an unpredictable story is because after all of the tragedies happen in this film, the one that has to be the culprit is the Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence (V.I.K.I) voiced by Fiona Hogan); Dr. Lanning’s first invention functioning as the supercomputer. As mentioned that Dr. Lanning stated that “there are possible ghost in the machine”, as V.I.K.I understood the three laws, her logical thinking also develops that to run the laws and to protect human, some human have to be scarified.

We cannot find the weaknesses from this film, but we found one missing scene that makes us feel astonished. It is when Det. Spooner pays for the drinks, it has to be three bottles since had 2 bottles and he pays for Det. John’s bottle, but the cashier-machine says that it is only two bottles.

We recommend this film for adults who love sci-fi action mystery, because this film has many spectacular actions part, quite fun and very gentle because there is no love story in this film. This film also may remind us to keep the future of world and to its next generation safe and always do the right things.

*****

(Written by Arij Zulfi M. & Ummu Imro'atus Sholihah)

References:

¹IMDb. (2004). I, Robot. Retrieved from:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/
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