A gifted programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) for a Google-like
corporation wins a company coding contest and is flown to the wooded,
mountainous , state of the art compound for what is ostensibly a week long
getaway with the brilliant, reclusive, and hostile CEO (Oscar Isaac). In
actuality, the contestant has been summoned for a series of meetings with a
highly cognizant female form of artificial intelligence (Alicia Vikander), a
Turing test to determine whether the cyborg can be viewed as indistinguishable
from a human being. Alex Garland’s Ex
Machina is sleek, intelligent sci-fi featuring strong performances from
Gleeson and Isaac (both stars of the upcoming Star Wars movies) and quite a remarkable and easily overlooked one
from Vikander, but the film lacks immediacy or a sense of urgency and the
ongoings are fairly obvious.
** 1/2 out of ****
