Ex Machina – It gets better

‘Ex Machina’ is one of those films where, upon watching the whole thing, I’m glad I stuck with it.  It tells the – slightly slow-moving – tale of a young computer programmer who works for a huge, multinational tech company and is then apparently picked at random by his reclusive billionaire boss and asked to join him in his mountain retreat for ‘special duties.’ Of course that slightly sounds like he’s got a case to sue for sexual harassment, but it’s not like that.  His Bill Gate-likes founder has only gone and created the first ever artificially intelligent robot/android/cyborg (call it what you will) and wants an independent source to witness this feat.

Luckily, for our hero – Caleb – this artificial life form isn’t the kind of muscle-bound cyborg who typically comes back in time to kill your mother.  Instead, she – or ‘Ava’ – is more designed around the ‘female form’ (well… most of her, anyway – there are still parts of her on show that are blatantly wires and circuit boards).  Anyway, this makes their interaction a little more ‘complicated’ – if that’s the right word to describe getting a crush on what is technically an iphone with eyes.  So, will our hero fall head over heels for her, or declare her simply just a toaster who looks good in a mini-dress?

The majority of the film is basically conversations between either Caleb and Ava or Caleb and his boss, Nathan (Oscar Isaac).  Now, there’s nothing wrong with a film based mainly around dialogue.  It does bring the characters and their motivations out and you really feel like you’re getting to know them.  However, I just found the first half of the movie a little slow.  I ‘got’ the characters pretty early and it was clear to see that there was more going on here than meets the eye.  Perhaps the film did too good a job in setting up the unsettling feeling as to what was going to come?  I was basically dying for something to happen – or someone to die – whatever.  But, like I said, when it all goes down it’s worth the wait.  The second half of the film changes from simply ‘unsettling’ to downright dark!

Despite the film having little action, it does maintain a real ’28 Days Later’ feel.  And probably for the reason that it was written by the same writer.  The lingering shots and music make it possible that it’s set somewhere in the same universe (assuming there’s still some of the world left after the ‘infected’ had their way with it!

Normally, like to mention one of the actors who stood out.  I feel that I should say that Oscar Isaac gave a great performance, but I’m not entirely sure he does.  One of my annoyances with the first half of the film came from him.  I just felt he was so fundamentally unlikeable.  Maybe that was supposed to be how he was, but when a character makes up basically one third of the cast and is so downright awful, it left it a bit hard to take.

Still, despite all my minor gripes, I did enjoy the film (as I say, mainly the second half where I felt it sped up a bit!) and so if you’re in the mood for something with no car chases or giant robots stomping through New York then give this one a go.  It’s got good performances and is more of a subtle thriller than Hollywood’s average crop.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that