Dreadfully Boring

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I am thinking of the 2016 "Arrival" as I watch this beautifully crafted story in which the military believes it is in charge of the "miraculous"--for the questioning mind of Michael, the laboratory-created being,is sensitive and creative. He processes both literature and experience, and asks questions. During his first venture into the world beyond the laboratory he is sensitive to expectations, and capable of wonder--seeing the toy train and being mesmerized by "the little puffs of smoke". The laboratory has produced something which is in fact a someone, a new person. And, as in "Arrival", the appearance of something not understood elicits two kind of response--the need to control it, and the need to understand it. I recognize that we are stuck with institutionalized fear in our military establishment--and by "we" I mean humans. Still crawling forward out of the primordial ooze. And now I'm going to finish watching the excellent movie which gave rise to this realization.

But I was quickly reassured. From the moment Christopher Plummer shows himself to be a genuinely irascible old man and not your typical 'hero', and David Morse as the android, in his elongated pants and wide-open baby-face, made their first appearances, I was held. With its' plot -- professor wants to keep his invention out of the hands of the military -- this is nothing new in the plot department but it is written with care, and the cast (including the wonderful Frances Steenhagen as Plummers' feisty wife) and a good director, David Greene, make the most of it. The ending is a stunner, both clever and touching. On my list as one of those films I was expecting nothing of and was delightfully surprised.

'THE FUTURE IS NOT FRIENDLY' intones the cover. While this may or may not be true, the movie is set in 1983. I suppose that being suckered into buying this bargain DVD at Wal-Mart in 2005 is the unfriendly future they were referring to.The cover art is a lie. There are no skeletal Terminator-style robots with red eyeballs in this movie. The android guy wears a white turtleneck and is less threatening than Star Trek's Data, and he doesn't do anything interesting. He's a wuss. This movie is crap.If you are responsible for the marketing of this DVD, you should be ashamed of yourself.

This is one of the most compelling and heartbreaking redux of the Frankenstein story set in a modern age. Plummer gives a great portrayal of a scientist working to push make his vision come true without realizing why it is so important. David Morse is very good as Michael the Prototype android of the title. His innocent curiousity about the world pulled me into the story. And his realization about the way things are in the end tore my heart. When Michael says, Don't hold me. You can feel the metal." The pain was shared between the three of us, Dr. Forrester, Michael and me.