Chris McSweeney reviews The Machine
In short, “The Machine” is an uneven blend of ideas both great and terrible.
Soon to open at indie cinemas in Cardiff and London, it is an independent Welsh film that follows the story of two irritating scientists as they stand slack-jawed at the edge of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. That’s about all I can say without giving away any spoilers, and in all honesty that’s already a more accurate plot synopsis than the one that already exists on the IMDb.
It is essentially a modern retelling of the “Frankenstein” story, set to a bleak near-future narrative in which Britain is in a Cold War with China. It clumsily and unconvincingly explores the themes of artificial intelligence, the relationship between man and machine, and how one-dimensional stereotypes react to novel situations.
This movie had some genuinely impressive moments, which are the result of some very competent film-making; the visual effects are beyond anything I could’ve possibly imagined and are nothing short of spectacular, given the film’s low budget. Aside from this, the cinematography is very impressive – however it segues from being beautifully shot to appallingly shot so frequently it will leave you both dizzy and confused.
The set design was also impressive, and more accurate than you might assume – a Q+A with the director revealed that care had been taken to make the sets look authentically MoD. As well as this, the techno-babble isn’t as stupid as it initially sounds either – the crew have indeed done their homework.
However, I’m sorry to say it was all for nothing, as the three critical elements that keep people interested – script, acting, casting – are nothing short of appalling. The characters are incredibly flat, often spewing robotic exposition, and they occasionally have outright bizarre sweary outbursts in a desperate bid to make the dialogue seem more brooding.
The film’s leading actress is sublimely annoying, and her shrill, squeaky voice made me want to knaw off a thumb before the hour mark. As for Tobey Stephens, after 10 years of following that guy’s career, I still can’t tell if he’s a bad actor, or if he’s consistently fed awful scripts. Either way, in this film he often acted as though he’d just witnessed some horrible event and had been given a powerful sedative.
The fundamental flaw with this film is that some very talented people worked very hard to put together a visually stunning piece of work – but seemingly no one took the time to read the script. It was awfully clear right from the opening scenes that it’d been written in one draft, possibly over a single weekend.
This was incredibly frustrating to witness, because there’s no reason that independent, low-budget films – when done right – can’t become world-wide blockbusters (i.e. Paranormal Activity). However, once it’s film festival run is all said and done, the plucky production team – Red&Black Films – will see this movie fade away into obscurity. They will say it’s because they didn’t really have the resources, or they didn’t have bigger names attached, but they will be wrong. It’s because the whole idea was flawed right out of the gate; the basic elements that were at their own fingertips right from the get-go (dialogue, characters, pacing) were so catastrophically out of whack it sunk a film that really could’ve been something special. Shame.
5/10
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