Amazon.com
As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith (
Independence Day,
Men in Black) displays both his trademark quips and some impressive pectoral muscles in
I, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind--he's just not sure how. When a leading roboticist dies suspiciously, Spooner pursues a trail that may prove his suspicions. Don't expect much of a connection to Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction stories;
I, Robot, the action movie, isn't prepared for any ruminations on the significance of artificial intelligence. This likable, efficient movie won't break any new ground, but it does have an idea or two to accompany its jolts and thrills, which puts it ahead of most recent action flicks. Also featuring Bridget Moynahan (
The Sum of All Fears), Bruce Greenwood (
The Sweet Hereafter), and James Cromwell (
Babe,
LA Confidential).
--Bret Fetzer
On the DVD
The good news for
I, Robot fans is that the two-disc All Access Collector's Edition is loaded with features. The first disc has three commentary tracks--by director Alex Proyas and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, by various technical folks, and by composer Marco Beltrami accompanying an isolated score. The second disc has four hours of behind-the-scenes footage, artists' conceptions, interviews with the creative talent (though not much with the actors), and a discussion of sci-fi and Isaac Asimov. The bad news is that if you're a fan, you probably already picked up the original DVD, which had only the Proyas-Goldsman commentary and a couple of meager featurettes and was released less than a year earlier. Yes, once again you've become the victim of the dreaded "double dip," a deluxe, feature-packed DVD released on the heels of the initial feature-light (a.k.a. "vanilla") edition. In the studio's defense, it's possible that the wealth of supplemental material--viewable all at once (!) or in chunks via one of the most dense and confusing menu structures you've ever seen--was just too massive to prepare in time for the initial release. Even so, the danger is that DVD buyers will learn to simply avoid the first release just in case a better release will come along later. Of course, if you're only interested in the film, the initial DVD release will serve just fine.
--David Horiuchi