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The Machine
Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival April 20,2013
Plot (Spoiler Alert)There is a cold war with China and Vincent McCarthy works for a weapons company, but his specialties is making intelligent machines. He is in need of an assistant and he meets a woman, Ava, through a job interview. What Vincent likes about Ava is her expertise. Ava gets to learn what Vincent has to work with. He builds robots and make them look like humans. One of them warns Ava about Area 6. Vincent uses Ava as a test subject while he makes a copy of her brain through a computer and from personal questions that he asks her. Ava asks Vincent what is in Area 6 and he tells her that there are veterans who have suffered brain damage so the company made them half machine to fix their problems.Ava knows Vincent doesn’t like working for the weapons company and she doesn’t understand why he stays. Ava snoops around in restricted areas of the company because she feels they are hiding something. Shortly after Vincent comes clean with Ava and tells her the reason he stays is because he uses the budget to find a way to cure his daughter, Mary, from Rett syndrome. Now that Ava knows that what Vincent is doing is for a good cause she wants to help him. Thomson, the guy who’s in charge of everything, puts a hit on Ava and she gets killed one night. They make it look like the Chinese killed her. Using the scans he did of Ava, Vincent builds a robot to look like her. He calls her “Machine". He tests her and she has some similarities to Ava. Vincent believes she has potential to be more than just a soldier, but Thomson wants to turn her into a killing machine. Thomson has “Machine" use her physical skills to kill a man. Later Vincent finds Machine in the corner and asks what’s the problem. Machine tells Vincent that she killed a man and Vincent knows that Thomson had something to do with it. Vincent’s daughter, Mary, dies after the doctors try to perform surgery, but the infection was too strong. Vincent is upset for his loss. He feels that Machine will be nothing more than a robot, but he soon discovers she has artificial intelligence. After Vincent tells Thomson he wants parts of Machine’s brain shut down before the next generation is taken over by machines, but Vincent won’t allow it. Thomson has a copy of Mary's brain and he will give them to Vincent if he changes Machine. Vincent has no choice. He informs Machine what he is supposed to do to her and why. She understands and goes with it. Vincent operates on Machine and takes out her consciousness even though it isn’t easy for him. After that Vincent asks for his daughter’s mind, but Thomson goes behind his back and plans to delete his daughter’s program. Thomson then has Vincent taken away. Machine is being tested on her skills. Vincent is being used as a target practice for Machine, but she fires a blank at him. It isn’t long before one of the other scientists discovers that what Vincent really removed from Machine was just a backup to her G.P.S. Machine unties Vincent and they have help from the other cyborgs. They kill the humans in the building and Machine goes to save Mary's mind. Thomson has half of the cyborgs shut down from his office, but his cyborg aide, Suri, overrides his access. She also allows Machine to get inside his office by opening the laser proof doors. Thomson shoots and wounds Suri as Machine enters the room. He tries to shoot at her, but she is indestructible so she throws a grenade into his office. Thomson tries to drag himself away from Machine. Machine crushes his skull. Meanwhile, Vincent frees the other cyborgs and activates a detonation to go off. After he is done he meets up with Machine and she is able to download Mary’s mind into her own brain. Vincent, Machine, Suri and the other cyborgs leave the base. The film concludes with Vincent talking to his daughter Mary on a tablet. Mary wants to play with her mother, Machine. Machine takes Mary and Vincent watches the two of them watch the sunset together. 
Blaine: James compares “Ex Machina” to “The Machine” because they are both about how machines take on a life of their own. He said it’s from the Latin term deus ex machina which means "God in the machine". He also said once you make a complex machine does it take on a life on it’s own or does it become sentient? I know for fact that the female scientist, played by Caity Lotz, her name is Ava just like Alicia Vikander’s character in “Ex Machina”. Both Ava and Machine are different from each other because of their personalities. Ava is all smiles and is a scientist where as Machine is learning to smile and stuff, but she does know a lot. She can feel fear and of course she falls in love with Vincent. She is also a physical fighter and more of a soldier. She also has a blank look on her face a lot of the time. Her voice sounds like a young British girl compared to Ava’s American voice. Machine’s hair is very light and the skin on her face will look like a mask at times. She is made out of some kind of indestructible armor as well. It was a dream role for Caity Lotz to play two different characters in the same film and it was fun for her to give them different personalities. Toby Stephens who plays Vincent in the film said "it’s like working with two different actresses because you get two different things from Caity." They thought they would need a body double for the scene where the Machine is dancing, but when they cast Caity Lotz they found out she is energetic, flexible and physical so she was able to do her own stunts. She is a dancer in real life; she was a dancer first and became an actor after. She is also a martial arts practitioner. It really came in handy that she already knew martial arts because they didn’t have a whole lot of money and there wasn’t a lot of time to train for the fight sequences. The dancing scene is what director Caradog W. James was really looking forward to shooting the moment when Machine, for the first time, expresses joy through dancing and movement and begins to realize the power of her body. It’s both a great shot and effect because she is a silhouette during that scene and then her inside parts will light up. The machine glows up from the inside out showing the machinery that she is made of in red. Her eyes glow too and they are bright blue and the other robots eyes glow as well. Iranian actress Pooneh Hajimohammadi who plays Suri, the leader of the soldiers, said it was a bit challenging because no one really talks about the character she plays in the film and she herself never talks except for this digital language she speaks to the other robotic soldiers and what is difficult is trying to understand her and understand who she is, so Pooneh made up a background for the character so she would know what she wanted and she hoped audiences got it through her performance. Suri is half human and half machine. She was a soldier then went through some damage to the head while in battle and so the scientists had to replace whatever parts of the head were damaged. Now her mind can operate like a computer to gain access through the company's files with her mind. I like Suri because she looks like the character who is an assistant of the person in charge, but there is more to her than that (she is a soldier) and she is on the right side. The digital language Suri speaks with the other robots is a secret language so that the humans won’t know what they are up to. The robots of the movie have been inside the factory too long, they want out and to see a world where they can exist. Director Caradog W. James wanted the secret language to be a real language and the credit for the language goes to Pooneh Hajimohammadi because she taught the actors playing the robot soldiers how to speak Farsi and then the sound would be digitally manipulated. Pooneh Hajimohammadi said it was exciting to be a part of this movie because not a lot of Middle Eastern actresses get the chance to play a cyborg and do sci-fi films. Suri gets shot and wounded by Thomson, but I believe she’ll be alright because when it shows the soldiers leaving the building, Suri is in the back seat unconscious and the bullet went through the right side of her chest and it doesn’t look like anything too serious as long it gets stitched up fast. Jade Croot who plays Mary, Vincent’s daughter, said she watched seventy two videos with her mom on Rett syndrome so she could get the feel of the character in the film. In the end Vincent gets to keep both Machine and his daughter Mary and his family is now a robot and a computer. I like how it concludes with the silhouette of Machine looking at the sunset. My rating on “The Machine” is five out of five stars. 
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