October 3, 2023
In the future, AI was already part and parcel of human society. In 2055, a tragic deadly accidental explosion of a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles was blamed on AI, so since then the West had been taking steps to eradicate AI altogether by gathering them up and destroying them all. However, a country called New Asia did not support this extreme Western initiative, and still lived with their AI simulants in defiant resistance to Western powers.
In 2065, the US Army inaugurated their NOMAD system, which could destroy AI beings it detected with missiles launched from a space station. US Army Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) was there at that time of the first surprise attack which claimed the life of pregnant wife, AI engineer Maya (Gemma Chan). Later, Taylor was assigned by his superior Col. Howell (Allison Janney) to track down a new weapon Maya supposedly invented.
British director Gareth Edwards only had three films before this new one, which he also co-wrote and produced. As with his last two films, which were both epic sci-fi franchise films, namely "Godzilla" (2014) and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016), Edwards had a flair for telling complex stories, effectively imbuing them with a beating heart. The AI simulants in this story were very human-like, with emotional issues that we can all connect with.
We knew John David Washington playing very cool guys in "BlacKkKlansman" (2018), "Tenet" (2020) and "Amsterdam" (2022). Here as Joshua, we see a new Washington playing probably his most emotional character ever. He may not have had romantic chemistry with Gemma Chan's Maya, but he certainly had chemistry with 9-year old first-time child actress Madeleine Yuna Voyles, who displayed such a precious talent playing the prodigious AI Alphie.
The main story would become very familiar once the resistance of the AI were violently attacked by the US Army, tempting you to make real-life parallels in world history and even current events. It was not a flattering portrait of the US Army, who was painted as the main antagonist with its heartless homeland defense policies which did not care about collateral human casualties sustained by their military actions against foreign countries. 8/10.
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