So this was a perfect 'spare couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon' movie which wasn't going to be unduly taxing on the brain and hopefully would provide a few thrills along the way.Well it certainly wasn't taxing even if the thrills were somewhat lacking. This remake of the 1951 original was a watchable sci-fi flick replete with the standard end of the world CGI effects we have seen in movies like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon etc. There were a few nods to the original with Reeves' alien taking the same 'spacey' name Klaatu and bringing his iconic robot buddy GORT (retooled for the modern age to mean Genetically Organized Robotic Technology) along to do some menacing.
The movie gets on with things pretty quickly, sensibly skipping too much preamble and preferring to crank up the arrival of the spheres of doom at various locations on Earth. Jennifer Connolly plays the obligatory egg-head in this version, befriending the alien when the seemingly Bush Administration appointed Kathy Bates, playing the President's 'representative', starts suggesting a Guantanamo style welcome for Klaatu. Reeves is actually very good in the role of the visiting creature from another planet forced to take human form to carry out his mission. His Vulcan-like emotionless acting will surely have provided some chuckles for his detractors but I enjoyed the icy Gary Numan like repartee with the humans he encounters throughout the movie. Naturally with this being a big budget Hollywood affair we had to have a human back story with requisite child, Jaden Smith, grieving for his lost parent while struggling with step-parent Connolly only for them both to reconcile in the end enabling Klaatu to realize humans have 'another side' (yawn).
What was a genuine surprise for me was that this film was basically a full blown commercial for everything Al Gore. The 1951 screenplay was updated by original writer Edmund H. North who was joined by David Scarpa to give Klaatu's reason for arriving on earth with GORT more relevancy to the present day. Reeves told slashfilm.com:
“The first one was borne out of the cold war and nuclear detente. Klaatu came and was saying cease and desist with your violence. If you can’t do it yourselves we’re going to do it. That was the film of that day,” Reeves explained. “The version I was just working on, instead of being man against man, it’s more about man against nature. My Klaatu says that if the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives. I’m a friend to the earth. …what we are doing and who we are as a species. We’re trying to reach beyond the idea of [just] environmentalism.”
It's hard to argue against the message in the film and frankly the way the world is headed environmentally it would be the best thing since sliced bread if aliens showed up to lend a hand!
Rating: ***
Great review - I'll give it a watch when it's released in the UK. Good to hear another job well done from Keanu Reeves. I thought Street Kings was his best acting to date.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the first movies I reviewed on this blog, only a 2 star film for me: http://www.bigandsmallscreen.com/2008/09/movie-review-street-kings.html
ReplyDeleteI'm still waiting for Point Break 2!