TRANSCENDENCE
Starring: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara
Directed by Wally Pfister
Reviewed by Brendan Dousi
[Rating: 2/5]
Good ol’ Johnny Depp hasn’t been having a good run lately. It’s actually hard to think of the last decent film he was in. After a quick IMDB search it basically comes down to, “Oh, I guess The Lone Ranger was ok…” Now Johnny Depp has decided to try and play it straight after a series of roles that consisted of increasingly complex white face paint, well, kind of. He does also turn into a computer. He stars in Transcendence, veteran DOP Wally Pfister’s maiden voyage into the director’s chair and a film that could either invigorate both of their careers or leave us all shaking our heads going, “Oh, Johnny…”
Will Caster (Johnny Depp) and his loving wife Evelyn (Rebecca) are scientists on the verge of a breakthrough with their Artificial Intelligence research, P!NN. Unfortunately there are foul deeds at play when a mysterious (i.e. vague and never truly explained) organisation shoots Will with a radioactive bullet he is given little over a month to live. Evelyn is unwilling to let Will go and proceeds with a process to upload his consciousness inside of a computer with the help of fellow scientist and voice of reason/gloom, Max Waters (Paul Bettany). When they ultimately succeed, Will and Evelyn try to escape the scrutiny of the government, Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy), and the reach of the mysterious terrorist cell run by the ruthless Bree (Kate Mara). If this isn’t enough drama for you already, Evelyn soon starts to suspect that something might not be right with Will. Oh, and Morgan Freeman is there for some handy exposition in the form of another scientist, Joseph Tagger.
There’s something off about Transcendence. It never gets to a point where you can truly call it a “bad” film. It’s technically proficient, everyone delivers decent performances and the script constitute of some interesting ideas. You’re almost left wishing that the film had been much worse so that at least you could have laughed at it. The problem is, Transcendence is just plain bland. It never truly excites or motivates the audience, it simply trudges along with each scene serving it’s purpose until the film finally ends. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what went wrong here, but ultimately it comes down to the inkling that this film has been neutered. Apparently the script for Transcendence has been on the Hollywood Blacklist of Screenplays for a while, a list that consists of the best of the best unproduced Screenplays, and originally had a lot more action set-pieces and a lot more to say on the subject at hand. I guess we can only assume that once a studio got hold of it, they wanted to make some changes. This all said, a good movie can still be made out of a mediocre script but it simply felt like there was no heart put into it. Everything was so by the numbers and droll that you just end up sitting there, letting it all wash over you.
As I said before, the film isn’t without merit. It looks nice enough and all of the performances are fine. Johnny Depp plays an admirable guy stuck inside of a computer. Most impressive though was Rebecca Hall as Evelyn Caster, she was truly doing her best to insert some emotion into an otherwise clinical screenplay and at some points pulls that off. The ideas of whether technology is beneficial for mankind is prevalent in this film, an interesting one that definitely deserves further exploration. Transcendence never truly takes a stand on either side of the argument, which gets fairly frustrating, and constantly flip-flops between the two stand-points. While it’s probably the point of the film that it never truly takes a stand on the issue, it would just have been nicer if they presented that a little…better.
Transcendence isn’t a terrible film by any means, it just isn’t an exciting one. If you’re after a somewhat serviceable Sci-Fi drama with some interesting ideas behind it, this is the best on offer for you at the moment. Just don’t expect to be emotionally satisfied by the seemingly heartless machine that Will Caster has become.
