Word: cops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Tommy is a lot like Leary's previous TV character, a self-destructive Irish-American cop on the ABC sitcom The Job. That show debuted in spring 2001 and then ran smack into the aftermath of 9/11, when TV executives were not exactly eager to air unsentimental treatments of public servants. But FX is a different network, a cable channel trying to distinguish itself with controversial series like The Shield and Nip/Tuck. And it's a different time: now New York City fire fighters have been making the news for infractions that involve drinking and drugs and for suffering budget...
...cop here is Spooner (Will Smith), investigating the death by defenestration of an inventor (James Cromwell) days before his company's new line of "automated domestic assistants"--home androids--is to be unveiled. Because he's the standard cop-hero sociopath and also because he just can't stand robots, Spooner suspects everyone. Dammit, he suspects anything modern. As the U.S. Robots boss (Bruce Greenwood) says, "You would have banned the Internet simply to keep the libraries open." Spooner focuses his skepticism on a prototype droid named Sonny, the only creature in the room with the inventor when he died...
...painting computer graphics over an actor (here, Alan Tudyk). It's a suave simulacrum that makes Sonny the film's most complex and human character--granted, by default--and sets him apart from the killer "can openers" in pursuit of Spooner. There's a nifty car chase, with the cop (in an Audi, its logo prominently displayed) set upon by a vicious android posse. Even if the scene is not up there with the 14-min. freeway free-for-all in the second Matrix movie, it's a smart, vigorous blend of live action and computer graphics...
...placement since Cast Away.) And morose gumshoes will obsessively patrol the streets for sophisticated robots that have an itch to be human. Yes, readers of future past, I, Robot - "suggested by" Isaac Asimov's pioneer collection of short stories published in 1950 - is another gloss on Blade Runner. The cop here is Spooner (Will Smith), investigating the death by defenestration of an inventor (James Cromwell) days before his company's new line of "automated domestic assistants" - home androids - is to be unveiled. Because he's the standard cop-hero sociopath and also because he just can't stand robots, Spooner...
...Tough cops, car chases, killer bots - the sci-fi action-movie format is starting to rust. Director Alex Proyas used to be able to spiff up the genre; his Dark City and The Crow created vivid, lurid nightscapes. This time, even given a lavishly muscled superstar and a murder plot with a soft heart (Sonny is a member of a minority the prejudiced cop has to learn to love), the gifted visualist goes all pedestrian and impersonal...