3 Short Paragraphs: Kill Command

2016, Steven Gomez (visual effects guy) -- download

Kill Command also called Identify in the UK, begins with a high tech corporation employee learning of something nefarious going on in the matrix. A "programming anomaly" has happened at a military training facility and she is assigned to deal with it. We get the feeling that Mills is not quite human, or maybe not even human at all, as she interacts with the high tech computer systems via overlaid retinal imagery. Cyborg or killer android, we are given to immediately distrust her. So when she is assigned to the low rent Aliens marine corps to investigate the facility, we buy into their worry.

This movie comes from a special effects guy, a guy whose credits include terrible fake mermaid documentaries and a docu-sideshow about bugs infesting people. I was hoping he might be the producer of one of those CGI heavy shorts you see on YouTube or Vimeo, usually involving a post-apocalyptic soldier going up against a alien robot. The trailer and the image of the Big Bad Robot in the movie caught my attention, but soon in, this was very obviously all retread stuff. The marines are by the book, no not the military book, but the military science fiction book. Only Vanessa Kirby as Mills, the cyborg, we soon confirm is dancing  a little outside of her boundaries.

Mills leads the soldiers onto the island, one used to train human soldiers to go up against machine soldiers. We get the impression the soldier life is waning, as more and more machines do their killing for them. These are not Chappie style humanoid soldiers, but rather lame looking Johnny Five on treads mobile gun platforms.  Well, except for the Big Bad, who I admit, I rather liked. Its too bad they only got so much budget because a couple of designs is all we got. The programming anomaly Mills is there for turns out to be the "best way to learn how to kill humans is to kill humans" idea of Machines Go Evil we see so often. But she also gets the idea her company is behind this, so she does her best to keep these guys alive. Well, some of them.