Sunday 22 September 2013

Dalet!

It's a TV mini-movie series about an end of the world scenario, because that's new! An AI evolves on the net, and tries to destroy humanity... is this the X-Files?

But yeah, an AI starts causing problems, making the government sit up and take notice. And, of course, get annoyed that others might be able to control it, and want to destroy it themselves (and, to be fair, the AI does intend to destroy them). At the same time, a group of hackers are taken out because they might have a proper counter solution, and a reporter and other hacker, who wants to be in on that group, track them down and what they wanted to do: create a counter AI. So will they be able to come up with an answer in time, or will the government push the button and end everything?

This is actually more watchable than most end-of-the-world type disasters for one main reason: there's no teenage family member of the main hero who gets stuck in some stupid situation that requires the hero to come and save them! There is a child, but she's just a sub-plot motivation, she's not the focus of anything! Yay! So we get two plots, one the government doing their things, and the other plot following the reporter and hacker. They interweave, but the plot moves along nicely and we don't get bogged down in emotional rubbish. Woo-freaking-zah!

There aren't really big names in this, but we do have Matt Frewer, Blu Mankuma and Seth Green in minor roles. The main "hero" is a young slacker type kid, who moon-eyes over the reporter, and a 'doing what it takes' FBI guy played by Ryan Robbins. This is written by Stargate team Mallozzi and Mulie, who usually do decent scripts. But for some reason, a lot of this movie gets undercut by some really weird shots from director Steve Barron. I think they are supposed to represent the eye of the AI, but they do not make a lot of sense.

Not terrible, but don't go out of your way to see this.

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