Revitalising a pulp genre
EX MACHINA. Directed by Alex Garland, with Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Issac and Sonoya Mizuno. needs a human lab rat to assist in his top-secret research project to build the world’s first free-thinking android, Ava (Alicia Vikander).
Initially informal and laid back, Nathan’s forced bromance with his new house guest soon takes an ominous turn when he presses Caleb into subjecting Ava to the “Turing Test” (as seen in Blade Runner), which is designed to differentiate humans from smart machines. But Ava has other plans, running her own sly tests on Caleb as she flirtatiously recruits him for a robot mutiny against Nathan. This threeway battle of wits eventually becomes a lethal fight for survival. Caleb is forced to choose between the seductive Ava and the bullying Nathan, both of whom appear to have murky motives.
Gleeson is excellent at conveying brainy beta-male vulnerability, and handles his American accent convincingly, but he still feels a little too wan for leading man duties. Heavily bearded and barely recognisable from previous roles, Isaac is more impressive. His method-style immersion in Nathan combines the Zen intensity of Steve Jobs with the party-hard muscularity of a surfer dude. The delightfully unexpected scene where he breaks into synchronized disco dancing with his mysterious Japanese partner Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) is one of the best in the movie, a welcome shot of humour in an otherwise self-serious project.
But Vikander is the heart of the film, her poised performance combining mechanical implacability with troubling emotional undertones. The Swedish-born ex-ballerina moves with a dancer's precision, incorporating subtle hints of cybernetic stiffness as she extends her lean biomechanical limbs to the soft whirr of internal servo motors. Conceived by a team led by production designer Mark Digby and costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ, Ava’s graceful humanoid form is the film’s chief visual trump card, scoring maximum eye-popping impact with a transparent wire-mesh jewel-case midriff and luminous cranium added in postproduction. She looks like a walking, talking, next-generation Apple product: the first iHuman maybe?
Artfully spartan in its use of digital effects, Ex Machina looks great, forging a strong visual aesthetic from a limited budget.
Garland’s screenplay is linear and low on tension, with too few of the dramatic swerves and shock twists that many sci-fi fans will be expecting. There are promising hints of a Stepford Wives feminist subtext in the male human/female robot power play, especially when Ava’s potential as an expensive sex toy is briefly discussed, as well as a teasing sequence about robots who believe themselves to be humans. Sadly, both these intriguing tangents lead nowhere. – Reuters/ Hollywood Reporter