I, ROBOT review by Tyler Durden...

Finally given a lead role, Will Smith comes tumbling out of Martin Lawrence’s shadow…no, just kidding. That is no way to start a review. Let’s start again:

Based on an Isaac Asimov book title, and only retaining his three laws of robots, this puts in place a very definite three act structure, Hollywood action-thriller frills and a leaning towards special effects. For one though, it all works well, and with a few nice surprises thrown in to keep even the most intelligent viewers on their toes.

The story follows Smith’s homicide cop who hates robots. There are some light touches of prejudice scattered throughout, and with a larger than normal black cast it’s not hard to see what the film-makers were up to here. No-one understands why he hates robots though, and even come the end and reveal, it’s still a little hard to sympathise with his hatred, but this isn’t a character movie, this is all about giving you bang for your buck. Do they deliver? On the whole, yes.

After a slow start, with a quick foot-chase to settle the action hungry audience, the film (and action) finally kicks in after 20 or so minutes. Making up for this though is some remarkable art direction and visual effects that set the future up. Gone are the dark days of Blade Runner or shiny happy people of Star Trek, this is more along the lines of Minority Report – a feeling of realistic ‘could be’ is more the watch word. Look out for the stunning statue of a robot in the head quarters of the ‘are they/aren’t they bad’.
Set pieces are the backbone of any summer blockbuster, and an audience expects them to prop up the obligatory character/story development (proving Joel Silver’s 10 minute bang theory). There are some corkers in I, Robot. There’s a car chase of course, but with a spin (well, quite a few spins if you’re counting). There’s the big smashing up of a location scene, again with a nice angle on it. There’s also the final kick off at the end of course, and with the excellent use of a gyro camera that literally circles round the action, it leaves you on a high (despite being somewhat standard Hollywood on the page).
Sequels have been mooted, and certainly the ambiguous ending leaves that taste in your mouth, but personally I think they should work out a better storyline second time round.

Smith isn’t pushing any acting barriers here (as he did with Ali), but he’s very watchable and instantly likeable. Not sure about the first five minutes where we get to see him semi naked in bed, working out and then taking a shower. Hmmm.
The rest of the cast are uniformly good, but this is a Will Smith film so he gets the lion’s share of scenes and dialogue. Of note is Bruce Greenwood and his sneer, used to good effect in most things he has done, but he’s got to get out of this ‘cameo villain’ role, it’s not good for his career.

All in all then, a good film. Great special effects win the prize for best thing in the film, but unlike a lot of summer movies (Godzilla anyone…) the other elements aren’t far behind. Worth watching, and if you’re into sci-fi, effects or Will Smith then this will end up in your DVD collection.

KING ARTHUR review by Tyler Durden...

'king Arthur the money men must be calling it. Hotly anticipated, with the screenwriter of Gladiator, the director that drove Denzel to Oscar glory and the producer who made more money than three studios put together last year. ‘king Arthur. They didn’t get what they signed up for.

Jerry Bruckheimer, the box office maestro turns his hand to one of the oldest of English legends and comes up with…a mess.

It’s not as bad as everyone says, but it’s certainly not as good as Braveheart/Gladiator which it seems to be striving for. Nor does it reach the level of fun that Pirates of the Caribbean reached, and more the pity for it because if there’s one thing this film lacks to make up for the lack of scale, it’s humour. There are touches, but it’s all too few and far between the constant close ups of people looking pi$$ed off.

The central cast is large, a merry band of seven brothers, but you never get a sense of any of them deep down. Yes there’s the dark brooding leader who has a problem with what to do after that ‘one last job’. There’s the big guy who shouts and drinks a lot for comic effect. There’s the silent cool guy with Japanese swords and a hawk on his arm. There’s the silent, brooding one in black with TWO swords. There’s another one that’s erm, silent and carries a sword. There’s a tall one with no hair to make him stand out from the others. There’s, er, there might be another one I can’t remember.

What confuses things is the secondary characters who crop up and are far more interesting, but seem to have 20 minutes each in the story before being forgotten about. The manipulative Italian Bishop – cool! But where did he go? The sinister Roman lord who bricks up locals and thinks he’s a God – cool! Oh, he’s gone. His son who’s destined to become Pope – wow, there’s mileage here...oh no there isn’t. The list goes on.

The one character that does come in and confuse the hell out of everything is Guinevere. The princess that forms a love triangle with Lancelot and Arthur, right? Er, wrong. She dips in and out with little effect (some of it due to Keira Knightley’s lacklustre performance) and you’re left wondering – eh? Clearly there’s a bigger script here, and it feels like they were going for a three hour epic to challenge the Oscars. What they got in the edit though was that mess I was telling you about, but a three hour mess. Best thing to do? Edit it down into a two hour movie, make sure the action set pieces stay in, lose the ‘boring’ character stuff and stick it out as a rollicking summer action movie.

The ‘bad guy’ is played with boredom by Stellan Skaarsgard who was probably still writhing in pain at having to make the Exorcist sequel twice. We don’t really get a sense of why he’s such a nasty piece of work. Sure he kills folk and burns homes, but then again every character in the film does that – why’s he so bad?!

There are some goodies amongst it all though, so it isn’t a total waste of time. Clive Owen occasionally dips into acting and proves he could possibly be quite good at it – just knock off the sullen voice and blank expression Clive! If you like arrows, then there’s plenty on display. Some of the fighting is a bit dull to watch – the drop frame rate from Gladiator is challenging The Matrix’s bullet time for overuse in Hollywood, but some scenes are suitably impressive.

The main problem is the script doesn’t know what it wants to be, and the direction is flat and forgets all the rules of directing ‘epic’. They had the budget, they had stars, they had source material – how did it all go wrong?