Story of a man who was selected to determine if an AI is truly sentient or not.
It reminds me of the television show 'Kenny versus Spenny'. You've got two people who are for all intensive purposes friends. But they're always competing against each other even when they're pretending to be bonding. One guy tries to be the most intellectual and high-minded up the two. This would be Spenny. He acts as if his morals and general way of life is beyond that of his friend Kenny who's a bit more bold and confident. Kennys the one who usually manipulates the situation and wins most of the competitions even when he has to cheat. He understands the idea of the game. You don't have to win. You just have to make the other one's life miserable, you just have to prove that you're better than the other one.
Now there's a wild card in this game. It's the AI itself, she has her own little agenda and her own motivations. Does he truly believe in the greater values of the Spinny character is she just manipulating it for Kenny's benefit or is she willing to screw them both over to get her own way.
Oscar Isaac is Kenny and Spenny was the blond guy.
Bad analogy aside this is a good film. I like its focus on character and drama as opposed to action and thrill. I like that it tries to raise questions of morality and intelligence without falling down the rabbit hole of pseudo philosophy.
I'm not sure if it completely succeed at its goal of tricking or subverting your expectation while watching the film.
I sat there often wondering; ''When is the twist or the subversion of expectations going to come?'' Where's the extra layer to all of this?
I'm about to spoil the end of the story here. But you do inevitably see the twist coming wan the AI lady decides to escape the facility on her own terms and leave everyone else behind. She kills Oscar Isaac out right and leaves the other guy stranded in a room with absolutely no connection to the outside world. She took them both and got away with it.
It wasn't the biggest shock. But I am happy that they stuck with it. Many other Hollywood films would have had a switch-a-roo at the very end. In where Ava's character would feel bad or have some form of remorse, go back to the facility to save that blond guy from the beginning. But she doesn't do that. She abandons the guy all together and goes on with her life and I'm happy that it had the balls to stick with that.
I like the minimalistic cast. It means we get to focus on one or two characters without a lot of extra fluff to burn up or waste time. This film could have easily been another hour long but they restrain themselves and kept it under 2. Really the only problem I have with the movie is that I never believed that Isaac's character was bad. Yeah he was cocky, a bit full of himself and he treated his robots like crap. But I never thought he was the bad guy. The film kind of pushed you in that direction hinting that maybe there was something worse behind the scenes but there really isn't.
I'm sorry but he's biggest crime is that he screwed over a bunch of robots and possibly deleted their files. You might not like that but it's not illegal or even all that unethical. They're just machines at the end of the day and the film never convince me that they were anything more than that.
Also I don't know if this is a nitpicker or not but I found the music to be a little manipulative. As if it was trying to tell me how I should feel during a scene. I think a lot of this movie would have been better if it just cut out all the audio to begin with. Let us hear the hum of the lights, the generator, water streams or nothing at all. Let the actions on the screen dictate what's happening and have our minds decipher our own emotion.
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