Boring

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

AUTOMATIC is a low-rent sci-fi B-movie starring French martial artist Olivier Gruner, a guy who had all the acting ability of a hunk of cheese but who knew how to kick when it came to the fight scenes. This is an incredibly cheap-looking movie that sees Gruner playing an android who rebels against his corrupt creators and is forced to defend himself from a hit squad.The entire film takes place in a dimly-lit building with the characters prowling the corridors and engaging in some low-rent fight scenes. The choreography is poor and the script worse, and it doesn't help that the cast is filled with actors giving laissez-faire performances which hardly fill the viewer with confidence.Throughout AUTOMATIC, the scriptwriter rips off many other, better movies. The single-location stalking sequences are reminiscent of the basic premise of DIE HARD, while of course THE TERMINATOR hangs over everything with the presence of androids (although the movie doesn't feature much of the cool robotic effect stuff you saw generally in '90s B-movies). There are also lots of scenes inspired by ALIENS. Inevitably, this movie can't hold a candle to any of those classics and is a completely forgettable piece of popcorn fare.

This film is one of the worst robot sci-fi flicks I've ever seen. The actor who played the lead role was worse than awful - he can't say one line correctly in the whole film. The plot is nonsensical - the aforementioned robot is a security guard or something who is super-strong and knows martial arts (although why he needs martial arts when he's almost indestructible isn't explained) finds its boss attempting to rape a woman and kills him. The corporation then retaliates by sending HUMAN mercenaries after the robot! What did they expect? That the humans would somehow destroy the super-strong, super-intelligent robot? They should've sent super-strong ROBOTS after him - they had enough of them! I was never in any doubt that the robot would win every time - the mercenaries never come close to killing it. The viewer is expected to feel sympathy for the robot and the other robots despite the fact that they're busy taking jobs from the humans as well as killing them - I was rooting for the humans all the way. They even have this ridiculous "sorrowful" scene with a robot head with no body with the woman saying something like how awful and cruel it is! Yeah, the next time I throw a broken toaster away I'm going to write a eulogy and say a few words... a truly nauseous scene indeed.As I said before, the viewer is never in any doubt that the robot would win, the mercenaries never had a hope; and I'm expected to delight in the killing of the mercenaries trying to make a living by a homicidal machine? Ha! The "twist" at the end takes the biscuit though. We find out the woman who was being attacked at the beginning is bizarrely also a robot and one of several hundred at that. Plot holes abound because of this: why are there hundreds of the same model? If the woman were in fact a robot, why didn't she have the super-strength like the protagonist had which would've enabled her to stop her attacker? Why didn't the man who was killed for attacking her know she was a robot and why didn't the protagonist robot know? Also vexing is the knowledge that the man was killed for attacking an advanced blow-up doll who wasn't even human and therefore was committing no crime thus making the robot even more homicidal and malfunctioning.The producers seem to have wanted to make some sort of film highlighting the "plight" of robots except they seem to be unaware that robots don't exist and thus support for their film from the oppressed minorities of electrical beings is therefore impossible.The morality, the plot, the acting, the characters and the general look of this film are completely amateur, unentertaining, predictable and formulaic. You've been warned.

Hey, the movie wasn't great. But for an evening in the easy chair and not much mind action..it was perfect. Oliver Gruner is my idea of a strong silent man...Not much talk but man, can he move. And Daphne Ashbrooke was not the wimpy female lead most often associated with "he-man" movies.

Although it is obviously "low-budget," this film combines "standard" action sequences with surprisingly well-done reflections on the plight of sentient "artificial life forms." I recommend it for its "science fiction" themes, and for those strictly seeking an "action-thriller" it's not lacking in explosions, shootings, and other mayhem either.:)