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I, Robot Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense stylized action, and some brief partial nudity) Theater release: July 16, 2004 by 20th Century Fox Directed by: Alex Proyas Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes Cast: Will Smith (Del Spooner), Bridget Moynahan (Susan Calvin), Alan Tudyk (Sonny), James Cromwell (Dr. Alfred Lanning), Bruce Greenwood (Lawrence Robertson) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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The movies have not been kind to Isaac Asimov. He may have been one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the past half-century, but very few of his stories have attained that particular form of popular validation that comes from being adapted for the big screen—and this despite the fact that movie after movie has been based on the works of his contemporaries, including Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and especially Philip K. Dick. On the rare occasion that a major studio has given one of Asimov's stories the green light, the story in question has usually been massaged into something rather formulaic and at odds with his sensibilities. Five years ago, Bicentennial Man was turned into a regular Robin Williams schmaltzfest, albeit one with loads of visual effects. And now, I, Robot has been turned into a regular Will Smith action movie, also loaded with effects.

Will Smith and the robot Sonny (Alan Tudyk)

This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. Asimov himself admitted he was a rather cerebral writer, and said his stories would need some heavy tweaking if they were ever to be translated into a visual medium like film. Most of the short stories in I, Robot, an anthology first published in 1950, were basically logic puzzles in which Asimov, having proposed that all robots would be programmed with three basic moral principles, teased out how machines of various degrees of sophistication might interpret and apply those principles. For those who like mental exercises, the stories are fun to read, but they are not all that dramatic, per se. In the 1970s, Harlan Ellison turned the book into a screenplay, which in turn was published some years later, with Asimov's blessing, after the studio decided against producing it. Ellison threw in a few gratuitous action scenes, but the script, which Ellison modelled after Citizen Kane, was more of a character study that followed the life of robot psychologist Susan Calvin from youth to old age, much as the book did.

Back then, it was still possible to think that a studio might invest in a major science fiction film that was not all about gunplay and explosions. But these days, studio executives and audiences alike tend to assume that, with the effects, there must be a fair bit of fireworks, too—and so the current film, directed by former music-video auteur Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City), emphasizes shoot-outs and car chases.

Bridget Moynahan and Will Smith

The story, which the credits say was "suggested by" Asimov's book and written by Jeff Vintar (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) and Akiva Goldsman (Batman & Robin, A Beautiful Mind), is set in Chicago in 2035, at a time when robots are so numerous there will soon be one of them for every five human beings. Will Smith—more serious than usual, but still strutting like he's the hippest thing in the joint and cracking wise when the mood hits him—plays Del Spooner, a homicide detective who hates robots, though for no readily discernible reason. Perhaps it's because they have taken menial jobs away from human beings, a possibility that echoes current concerns over immigrant and outsourced labor as much as it echoes concerns over the growth of technology. Perhaps it's because he's just an old-fashioned guy; he wears "vintage" shoes and his stereo is so retro it cannot be operated by voice, which is apparently the standard. Or perhaps it's because he has had a bad case of survivor's guilt ever since a robot saved his life when it could have saved a young girl instead.

Whatever the reason, Spooner doesn't like robots very much, so when a scientist of his acquaintance named Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) is found dead in the lobby of the U.S. Robotics office tower, he assumes the death was not a suicide but a murder perpetrated by a robot named Sonny (voice of Alan Tudyk). Everyone tells Spooner he's crazy—especially Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), a robot expert whose speech is so full of big words and whose mannerisms are so stiff and formal she seems almost mechanical herself. Every robot, she reminds Spooner, is programmed to protect humans at all costs, and to obey humans at all costs unless such obedience would harm human life. But it's kind of hard for Spooner to shake his suspicions when various robots keep trying to kill him, from a home-demolition droid to a whole phalanx of metal men that ambush him while he drives through a conveniently empty tunnel.

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