Films/DVD Asylum

2nd viewing, spoilers and comments

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In Reply to: RE: Automata posted by 63567 on March 21, 2015 at 11:00:27

Automata (2014)
Cast:
Antonio Banderas,
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
Dylan McDermott
Robert Forster
David Ryall

Director: Gabe Ibanez
Writers: Gabe Ibanez, Igor Lagarreta, Javier Sanchez
Format: blu-ray disc

Spoiler Alert!
Synopsis / outline:
2044 - Solar storms have killed 99.7% of Earth's population. 21 million people survive. The ROC corporation designs and builds robots called Automata Pilgrim 7000 to help rebuild the world.

Robots have two security protocols programmed into them: 1) A robot must bring no harm to any humans. 2) A robot must not repair or alter self or any other robot.

Police Detective Wallace (Dylan McDermott) shoots a robot he found altering itself, then makes a report of it. ie. Evidence of robots violating the 2nd protocol.

Jauc Vaucan. Protagonist. (Banderas) Pronounced "Jack". Works for ROC as an insurance agent / claims adjuster.
1) Talks with Wallace about his rogue robot report.

2) Follows another robot suspected of collecting spare robot parts. When cornered the suspect robot self-destructs by dousing itself with fuel and igniting a fire.

3) Jauc manages to recover the brain core from the burnt robot and takes it to a ROC company lab for analysis.

4) Robert - Jauc's supervisor and friend tells him of a "clocksmith" that is thought to have been able to override the security protocols in robots.

5) Jauc goes with Wallace to meet a prostitute robot named Cleo. Wallace shoots Cleo in the leg. His motive being to cause Cleo to search for repairs and possibly lead them to the "clocksmith". It works...or so we initially think.

6) Jauc finds Cleo in the laboratory of one Dr. Dupre (played by Melanie Griffith) who does robot repairs. Initially Jauc learns nothing from Dupre. Nothing that would incriminate the doctor or point to her as being the "clockmaster".

7) Dupre installs the burnt brain core from Jauc's earlier event into Cleo. Then Cleo begins making repairs to itself. Dupre calls Jauc to come over and have a look at this new robot behavior in Cleo.

8) Meanwhile at ROC headquarters, ceo Hawk confers with his subordinates. In his late seventies and heavy set, Hawk is discussing the possibilities of robots becoming self aware, and, therefore, alive. But this is private company conversation. Hawk's main concern is to cover-up any evidence of the 2nd protocol violations and then to silence those who have revealed this truth. (sound familiar?)

9) Back at Dr. Dupre's lab Jauc, robot Cleo and the doctor suddenly find themselves under attack by a hit squad. The doctor is shot through the head and dies instantly. Cleo and Jauc escape in a car driven by Cleo.

10) Car chase out into the desert. Cleo is an expert driver and manages to lure the pursuing ROC henchmen head-on into a heavy concrete barrier, killing both occupants of that vehicle. But Jauc and Cleo also suffer a crash in their car and Jauc is injured. Looks like a leg injury. Knocked unconscious.

11) Jack wakes the next morning to find himself being dragged along through the desert sand by a robot and on a make-shift sled constructed from car parts, including one car seat for him to sit in. Clever robot, Cleo. But then Jauc realizes that he is being transported into the 'radiation zone. This is an area of the desert very hazardous to humans. Further, a few more robots have joined with Cleo and they appear to be heading to a specific destination….. and Jauc is their unwilling passenger. As it turns out the only motive for bringing Jauc along on their journey is to prevent Jauc, injured as he is, from suffering dehydration and death in the desert heat. So the first protocol is still being observed. But Jauc soon realizes that these robots do not take orders from humans. They will not turn around and take him back to the city. So, their journey continues deeper into the radiation zone.

12) Along the way�.. Jauc discovers a flare gun in a bag of items Cleo had retrieved from their wrecked car. Jauc surreptitiously stores the gun into his belt under shirt. As the group passes through some large outcroppings of large rocks, Jauc excuses himself to "go take care of some human business". The robots wait. But when out of sight, Jauc takes out his flare gun and shoots a flare high into the desert sky. Then returns to the group of robots.

13) Detective Wallace, out in the same desert and driving in an SUV with another cop sees the flare, then drives toward the origins of it. Soon, Wallace catches up with the group. Wallace appears to be motivated by his police duties and enforcing the two robot protocols. He means to stop this group of rogue robots as a public safety matter. With extreme prejudice Wallace destroys two robots in the group and would have destroyed the rest had he not been shot in the abdomen by Jauc wielding his flare gun. Wallace dies an agonizing death as the flare burns a fiery hole into his guts. At this point it seems that Jauc's sympathies now lie with the robots and not the pursuing humans. Strange. On the one hand he used the flare gun to call for help. Then turns 180 and uses the same flare gun to kill his would-be rescuer.

14) By now ROC henchmen are on the trail following this robot caravan. Robert, Jauc's supervisor and friend has been forced by the henchmen to come and participate. Their objective: to destroy the rogue robots and eliminate any evidence, human or machine of this aberrant robot behavior before the public gets wind of it. But Robert refuses to participate in any murder and is shot dead by his murderous ROC companions.

15) At a canyon cable car station deep within the radiation zone the surviving robots and Jauc reach their destination. Once there they find another group of rogue robots that have set up a base of operations in the abandoned station. This is a facility once used by humans as a sight seeing tour to cross a very deep and scenic canyon. At the bottom of this canyon appears to be a dry river bed. But once, before the solar storms, a river had run through.

16) At this station among the rogue robots we now find the source of the 2nd protocol violations. The key figure is an early Pilgrim 7000 robot that ROC built. A prototype that was created without any security protocols. How he got away from ROC is not explained. But it is suggested that this robot is the one known as The Clockmaster. These robots are aware of their status of being alive. They regard themselves as a new life form set upon an evolutionary path that commenced with the solar storms that ruined the Earth for humans. The robots are busy building another robot. But this one has the shape of a multi-legged bug. A large bug. We don't yet know what its capabilities are.

17) The robots repair an old pickup truck for Jauc to drive back home with. Jauc says goodbye to Cleo then departs.

18) Shortly after Jauc departs the station, the ROC henchmen arrive in two Mercedes six-wheeled desert wagons (large SUV,looking like 2012 models) One truck carries three gunmen. The other carries one ROC henchman and two hostages; Jauc's wife and newborn baby. They bring along these hostages in order to leverage against Jauc.

19) With Jauc gone the gunmen destroy two of the rogue robots and wound Cleo in the right shoulder area of her robot frame. But by this time Jauc has gotten wind of the happenings back at the station and returns. With two gunmen standing in front of an array of 55 gallon barrels, holding who knows what, Jauc drives his pickup doing full speed at them. Driving straight into a barrage of single shot bullets being fired at his speeding truck, Jauc rams the truck into two of the gunmen who fail to get out of his way. They get crushed between the speeding truck and the barrels. The barrels don't move too much. Those two gunmen die on the spot. After the crash Jauc falls out the passenger side of his door-less pickup. He manages to get hands on a pump shot gun that had fallen free of the grip of one of the gunmen. With this weapon he shoots a third gunmen, killing him with a shot to the center of his over-sized belly. Ouch, and that is how the fat guy dies.

20) How Jauc's wife managed to get free of the grip of the 4 henchman. While the gunmen were distracted by the appearance of Jauc in his pickup, Rachel stole a combat knife from the belt of one of the men and stabbed him in the thigh with it. Imagine the shock of that! That was enough of a distraction for Rachel, carrying her newborn, to rush to the side and avoid the speeding Jauc. Evidently Jauc hadn't noticed the men holding Rachel with them in front of the barrels. He just drove straight in. Good thing for Rachel and baby she's resourceful in a melee.

21) Meanwhile Jauc has crawled away from the wreck site and is leaning against a post near the canyon edge when Vernon, the lead henchman, spots him. Jauc, already injured by the first crash a day earlier, is now nursing hurts from his collision into the barrels. Not standing but not quite done in. Vernon walks over to within seven or eight paces from him and aims his shotgun straight at Jauc. Before pulling his trigger, Vernon asks; "What makes a man betray his own species? His own people! Jack replies:"I am not your people". Vernon gets ready to fire. But Jauc spots that multi-legged bug robot that had been assembled by the other robots at this site. The bug robot was approaching Vernon from behind. Vernon spins around to see it coming at him. The bug rears up on its hind legs, nearly as tall as Vernon, it springs onto him , knocking him off his feet and falling over the edge and into the canyon. But Vernon interrupts his own fall by grasping at protruding steel reinforcing rod sticking out of the concrete structure of the bridge not yet finished. With Vernon hanging by his two hands off of the rebar, the bug robot leans over, looks Vernon square in the face and emits some sort of ultra sonic that causes Vernon to cringe and lose his grip. Thusly Vernon falls into the canyon to his apparent death. We just hear the yell on his way down. Not the finish.

After this Rachel and baby come over to Jauc and its family reunion time. Next scene, Rachel and Jauc are driving back to town in one of the big Mercedes desert rigs.
Last scene. Jauc and family are at the beach. The only other place where humans can live.
The End

Commentary:
I thought the story had merit. A tale of the demise of one specie while another rises. But with a twist. The new life form will have been created by the dying specie, humans. Like that catastrophic event that is thought to have ended life for all dinosaurs at the end of the cretaceous period. Afterward the mammals were to dominate. For the dinosaurs it was a very large asteroid. For the humans, apparently it is to be massive solar storms. Oh man, what a future we face!

The humans we meet in this movie are largely represented by the ROC corporation and by the one police detective, Wallace. All of these characters are described in a one-dimension. They are frowning, angry and generally ticked off. We don't know anything else about them. The corporation people we meet operate beyond the law and lack any sort of recognizable integrity.....not to mention a distinct lack of morality. The cop, Wallace, is similar. He is perpetually pissed off. Displays no discretion or intelligence for that matter. He just wants to kill robots. And he's not too happy with Jauc either. A hothead.

Robert and Jauc represent the average man. Both are family men and are just trying to earn a living and make the best of what life might be possible in this dystopian vision of a world.

The robots are something of an enigma. They adhere to the first protocol they were programmed to and refuse to harm any humans. Even when the humans are pointing guns at them. That is except for that bug robot they made who definitely did harm one particular human. Without explanation the rogue robots just focus on the 2nd protocol, violate it and modify themselves as they see fit. Then, at movies end, they cross the canyon and go off to who knows where.

I just wonder how long it will be before this group of rogue robots decide to abandon the first protocol as well.

The cinematography was decent. Perhaps the direction isn't. For much of the city scenes, we walk through towns that appear to have been destroyed by artillery. Like a city after a large scale battle and most everyone dies. I don't know where it was shot, but I do suspect that you could find a city looking like this one in the present day middle east.

I don't think it was adequately explained why Jauc decided to side with the robots. And why the director and producer chose to make the corporate and police characters as hateful as they were. I think the movie falls down here. It just seems shallow and contrived in this one aspect.

It might have been a much better movie using the same plot elements.

-Steve

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