'Transcendence': Not a transcendent movie experience
The new Johnny Depp sci-fi movie, 鈥淭ranscendence,鈥� may seem newfangled, but its subject is that oldest of chestnuts: Thou shalt not play God. The only spin here is that God is, strictly speaking, a supercomputer.
Depp plays Dr. Will Caster, the biggest cheese in the field of artificial intelligence, who is close to creating a sentient machine that contains everything ever known to man, combined with the complete range of human emotions. He seems like a rather mild-mannered sort, not a world changer, but his research provokes anti-technology extremists to stop him at all costs. As 鈥淭ranscendence鈥� demonstrates, however, you can kill the body, but the mind, properly downloaded, can achieve immortality. It can even take over the world if you鈥檙e not paying attention.
What this all means, in mundane terms, is that Depp plays most of the movie as a species of hologram. Audiences expecting a flesh-and-blood, walking-and-talking Johnny Depp will be flummoxed. And his performance, at least when he鈥檚 in his 鈥渟ingularity鈥� phase, is about as thin as a hologram, too. He鈥檚 balanced out by the hyperactive Rebecca Hall, as Will鈥檚 adoring computer scientist wife, Eveyln, and Paul Bettany, as his best friend and fellow researcher Max. In the future, one hopes sentient supercomputers in the movies, not to mention in real life, will have a bit more oomph.
Moderately entertaining, periodically draggy, 鈥淭ranscendence鈥� is not as wacky-visionary as 鈥淭he Matrix,鈥� or nearly as lyrical as 鈥淗er,鈥� which was about a man鈥檚 romantic infatuation with a computer. The dialogue is often in the flat-footed 鈥淲e need to call Washington鈥� mode. Wally Pfister, a cinematographer (鈥淚nception,鈥� the 鈥淒ark Knight鈥� movies) making his directorial debut from a script by Jack Paglen, doesn鈥檛 have the transcendent spark. I rarely felt as if I was in another world 鈥� or that I was in a world brought shudderingly close to my own.
Maybe this is not entirely the film鈥檚 fault. After all, it鈥檚 getting more difficult by the day to distinguish people from their computers. Grade: B-
