Movie: Transcendence

Transcendence: a slow moving science fiction film.  I believe this is the first time I’ve ever combined the words “slow moving” and “science fiction” in the same sentence.  While there are positive aspects to this  119 minute movie, it is long 119 minutes.  The film has an excellent cast, including Johnny Depp as the lead character, Will Caster.  However, for the first time ever, Depp’s performance bored me.   While his Tonto can be criticized on many counts, boredom is not among them.  At its foundation, Transcendence has an intriguing premise: artificial intelligence using the brain of a single individual.  The opening sequence, which held my interest, shows Caster giving a Steve Job type presentation about where his research is heading.   As he is leaving the auditorium, he is shot but not killed.  For storyline convenience, the bullet, which is laced with radiation, guarantees Caster’s death over time.  The assassination is part of an organized eradication of people involved with artificial intelligence.  From this initial premise, which makes scientists the bad guys, the story winds through a series of implausible events that are told with too much verbiage and too little action.  Intertwined with the sci-fi/ thriller threads, the movie also tells a love story between Caster and his scientist wife, Evelyn, played by Rebecca Hall.  While Caster and Evelyn’s love for each other is eternal, there is no comparable chemistry between Depp and Hall and the connection falls flat.  Morgan Freeman appears briefly as a colleague of Caster but his role is very limited.  Also underused is Paul Bettany who plays Caster’s neurobiologist partner.  Roger Ebert often talked about the need for a film to be believable within its defined framework.  Transcendence falls far short of Ebert’s test.  This failure combined with the film’s painfully slow pace leads me to say for the first time ever about a Johnny Depp movie: it is not worth seeing.  The script, written by Jack Paglen, raises some fundamental issues about the potential power of machines and it is easy to understand what attracted Depp to the movie.  Unfortunately, the director, Wally Pfister, fails to overcome the script’s defects.  I hope Paglen and Pfister do not work together again.