TRANSCENDENCE - Wednesday 30th April 2014.

I ventured out to my favourite movie theatre last night - the Cremorne Orpheum to see 'TRANSCENDENCE'. Starring Johnny Depp in the lead role it is hard to see his recognisable visage on screen not caked in greasepaint and make-up (think Jack Sparrow, Tonto, Charlie, Sweeney Todd, and The Mad Hatter etc.), although in this one he does mid-way through hide behind a computer screen with a decidedly green hue!

Here he plays Will Caster a highly intelligent tech expert who sits on the cusp of releasing ground breaking Artificial Intelligence technology upon the world. After a seminar in which he is the key note speaker he is gunned down by extremists hell bent on avoiding an A.I. dominated world. He escapes the gun shot wound but not the poison the bullet was dipped in, and so he has only five or so weeks to live. His dutiful wife and equally A.I. savvy work partner Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) decide that they have the technology to knit Caster's brain up to the A.I. technology that they have hitherto developed - it's a risk but one they are both prepared to take. And so physically Caster dies, is cremated and the ashes scattered - but Caster lives on inside the computer (P.I.N.N.) they have developed, and then he uploads himself to the internet and becomes practically all powerful, all seeing, all knowing and all evolving constantly whilst consuming a huge amount of power in the process. 

After this it all begins to go off the rails I have to say and the story plays out over the next five years as virtual Caster guides wife Evelyn to some hicksville one horse town in the middle of the desert in which to build their super underground computer complex, laboratories and home, and harness a huge amount of solar power capable of sustaining all this infrastructure. Along the way the hurt are healed and made stronger by new nano-technology, limbs can be grown, damaged organs repaired, dead plant matter brought back to life and rain created over a barren desert all in the name of demonstrating what A.I. can do for the planet in a ground breaking, make the world a better place, positive way. But of course the realisation soon dawns that none of this is really helping the average human being in the street and we are not machines to be controlled by some super computer, and so something has gotta change!

Directed by first timer Wally Pfister who was Chris Nolan's DoP on many films including 'INCEPTION' this has the latter's trademark visuals all over it. The film is well crafted, looks cool on screen, there is enough technological wizardry to please any new age geek, and the other cast members include Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany and Cillian Murphy, and the budget was doubtless substantial. 

The moral of this story is that technology has taken over our lives in many respects already, and it is developing at a pace that we cannot truly comprehend or keep apace with . . . so don't fuck with it, because if you do, it can take us back to the dark ages. This is hammered home in the opening and closing sequence where spent laptops, defunct mobile phones, redundant keyboards, idle computer screens, and useless motor cars litter the streets no longer capable of working because the internet is dead, as is everything that was driven by it.

Thought provoking stuff but the film just does not deliver despite everything else it has going for it. I was underwhelmed by this and the answers of man versus machine, science over religion, evolution against revolution hardly feature when there could have been more to this as seen in numerous other films in the same genre exploring very similar themes.

You don't need to see this on the big screen, and you mind find it all a load of hokum . . . or is it!


-Steve, at Odeon Online-