Transcendence

Transcendence, a paranoid sci-fi thriller about the dangers of artificial intelligence, could have been a successful and enjoyable B-movie had it been made in the ‘80s or ’90s, but in 2014 even the dumbest audiences are just way too tech savvy to buy anything that happens in this hokey, illogical and often absurd picture. Fledgling screenwriter Jack Paglen and first time director Wally Pfister (the cinematographer behind all Christopher Nolan pictures since Batman Begins) lack the skill to suspend our disbelief as their hyper-intelligent scientist characters engage in behaviors so fantastically stupid that the only reaction available to us is dismissive laughter. The most grievous example is the protagonist, played by a woefully miscast Rebecca Hall. From her very first scene, there isn’t a single thing she does in this movie that makes any sense, even if you take as read that she is blinded by the loss of her one great love--an equally miscast Johnny Depp, who brings to his performance all the depth of a two-dimensional hologram even before he dies and has his brain uploaded into a super computer. Only Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman seem remotely credible, but that’s just because they play the same parts they always play. Not only is Transcendence a few decades too late to be taken seriously on a psychological, sociological, or theological level, but coming out the year after Spike Jonez’s Her, perhaps the richest cinematic meditation on artificial intelligence, it looks all the more ridiculous.