There's a neat story here about a genius programmer (Toby Stephens) who assists the military in developing a cyborg super weapon. But he's doing it to get funding to do research that will help him save his daughter who is suffering from some kind of severe brain trauma. He hires an assistant (played by Caity Lotz), whose brilliant work in artificial intelligence will help him reach his goal.
Lotz is really good here, first as the lovely scientist and later as a butt-kicking but tender cyborg. The movie feels like it was done very cheaply as most of the movie takes place in dark labs and other small areas. It's a pretty good science fiction story without any gore that stands out.
Bit different.
"How do I know that you're alive and not just a clever imitation of life?"
Huge Ex Machina vibes but on a much lower budget. The premise and action is pretty good, but does leave you wishing you had a little more time to see things play out more.
The British sci-fi thriller The Machine explores the age-old question of computer technology giving birth to artificial life. Set in a dystopian future where Britain and China are in a protracted world war, a MOD research scientist develops a neural network which he believes could be the key to creating artificial life. Caity Lotz stars as “The Machine” and gives an interesting performance. But, the script is pretty weak and does a poor job at explaining the war and how technology fits into it (other than the generic super-soldier cliché). There are also some leaps in logic and dropped subplots that add to the film’s unevenness. Yet while it’s problematic, The Machine does present some intriguing questions about man’s evolving relationship with technology.
Gave it a six for the first half of the movie, second part had to take 1 day break to watch it ... :))
It's silly to see this film being compared directly to Ex Machina when this film preceeded it, and both are entries in an already populated cliché subgenre of techno-Pygmalion films. This one's clearly low budget, but puts on a decent show in the first and second act, has good actors, and you do care about the two leads. It does kind of fall apart in the end, though, where it looks like they ran low on budget and inspiration in what was supposed to be the ass kicking cyborg portion of the film.
It has a kind of epilogue that does kind of smack you in the face with some legit science fiction cred speculative implications, though, where other entries never go past the "aRe mAcHiNeS aLiVe?" premise, so there's that in its favor.
+characters
~premise
-budgetary limitations
-story craft
Great film i preferred it over ex machina.
I stumbled over this movie when casually browsing the Netflix catalog yesterday. The plot is fairly unoriginal one but it is one I would probably have liked it, if it would have been well implemented. Sadly it was not. It was not even a half arsed implementation. I am at loss to understand how this disappointing movie can hold a rating at 6.1 at IMDb at the time of me writing this.
The movie is quite a low budget one. I can live with that. It is also quite dark. I can live with that as well. Unfortunately I found it to be a slow, boring, illogical and stupid mess. Of course it portrays the MoD as the stupid, arrogant and lying bad guys. No surprise there when it comes to most moviemaking today. Been there, seen that. Wasn’t fun the first time.
The implementation of the plot is also just poor with lots of stupidity and plot holes. These potentially dangerous people seem to some times be locked up in cages and sometimes be roaming around pretty freely. The lost speech part is also laughable. The idea that a RD center should not discover that the subjects communicated between themselves is just stupid.
As for the acting it is mediocre at best. Not really bad perhaps but certainly not very good either. It is really a low budget B-movie so this could perhaps have been swallowed but there is really not a single likable character in the entire movie. Almost everyone is an arse one way or another and the cyborg, who could have been interesting, is just… meh.
The majority of the movie is one long, slow and dark ordeal. Once we finally get some action it is pure B-movie style shoot a lot and fuck logic kind of action. The ending? The less said about it the better.
For me this one was a waste of time.
It looks like a B movie , has a script of series B movie . Fairly predictable and weak
The Machine is another one of the android/AI movies that have come out the last three years. It's clever in its own way, and Caity Lotz does an excellent job as "the Machine". It's a tad slow in some parts, and a has a few inconsistencies that annoy me, but overall it's a very good little movie. The Machine is actually thought provoking and makes you think about the dilemmas we face as machines grow smarter and smarter.
well...sure some parts of the plot could have been developed better... but Caity Lotz is fantastic... nice movie I definitely saw much worse
I really liked it. Specially Caty Lotz acting. She's an actress with a lot of potential, who is also a total badass! It explores what it really means to be human and how it trascends the flesh and goes beyond.
Una verdadera pérdida de tiempo. Una historia llena de huecos, chata, predecible.. absurda en muchos sentidos.
Very Blade Runner influenced in both style and content. Overall a very enjoyable movie.
Surprisingly good! I really like it.
Classic Sci-Fi, with hints of Blade Runner, A.I. and even some HAL 9000. I really liked it.
good god this movie is terrible. its really a mess. the story has a good kernel in it but has been done so much better in so many ways. i feel like whoever wrote this had a check list of things that he wanted to cover and did but with no cohesive story to bring it all together. every scene jump, and it jumps every 3 minutes or so, is another different thought. "because i love you", nearly hurt myself my eyes rolled so hard. terrible, terrible, terrible.
im gonna curl up and read some asimov now. maybe he can take the pain away.
Is the closest to Ghost in the Shell and Keloid you'll see these days. I liked it a lot!
old school sci fi! Highly recommend unless you are a transformers kind of movie fan .
Not so good
Far better then RoboCop (2014), in thoughts and sense more like A.I. (2001). Highly recommend.
Shout by Saint PaulyBlockedParent2017-06-14T18:48:53Z— updated 2019-01-08T23:27:49Z
This Wal-Mart version of Ex Machina started off better than expected but then got worse and worse until it became so bad I suspect it was ashamed of itself at the end.