Some years ago — well, more than I’ve been around, in fact — a young author named Isaac Asimov, who had written a couple of stories about robots, was sitting in his editor’s office in New York, shooting bull, when the editor suddenly pointed out that there were certain consistencies in his robot stories that should be made explicit. The editor (John W. Campbell, Jr.) then and there sketched out the Three Laws of Robotics, which Asimov gratefully accepted and made the basis for all his future robot stories, those set in the 20th-21st centuries (the collection I, Robot and a few others) and the later novels set a thousand years later in what was then a somewhat different future (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and their much later sequels). ⁽¹⁾

The current movie is set in the world of the collection with the same title and uses characters from the stories in that collection (Susan Calvin, Alfred Lanning, Lawrence Robertson — I don’t remember whether Del Spooner appeared in Asimov’s stories, however ⁽²⁾). Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith), who for reasons that are later explained has developed an antipathy to robots, is called to the scene of the death of robot creater Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) in the foyer of the Chicago skyscraper that is home to U.S. Robotics. Lanning apparently fell to his death from a locked room with an unbreakable glass window, and Spooner has to solve the crime. The immediate suspect is an experimental robot of the new NS-5 generation whom Spooner, in company with robot psychologist Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), finds buried under a pile of junk in the room. It soon becomes fairly evident that this robot, also known as “Sonny” (Alan Tudyk), is capable of violating the built-in three laws of robotics, the first of which prevents robots from harming human beings or allowing them to come to harm. The case would appear to be a slam-dunk for Spooner, but things are not always what they seem …

For those who haven’t seen the movie because they feel it probably violates Asimov’s general intent in these stories, I would say: don’t let yourself be tricked by the TV ads for the film — as usual, they take the action scenes out of context, and in this film the context is all important. If you’re romance-minded, don’t go to the film expecting something to develop between Spooner and Calvin — it doesn’t (and wouldn’t in Asimov’s stories, either — the man was an intellectual, not an emotional, author). I will add that the resolution of the questions in the movie (are the new NS-5 robots dangerous? why did Lanning die? who killed him? is it possible for other intelligent constructs than Sonny to violate the three laws of robotics?) probably owes more to Jack Williamson than to Asimov (cf. Williamson’s “With Folded Hands…”, later published in expanded book form as The Humanoids, to understand this comment).

An interesting and fairly well-done detective story set in a science-fictional background (note the neat new future way of parking cars in 2035; parking-lot valets are going to need a lot of retraining). CGI effects are very good; note the battle in the freeway tunnel and the final battle at the summit of the U.S. Robotics building. I feel good recommending this one.

⁽¹⁾ In his old age — I will not say “in his dotage”, though the thought comes to mind — after a long hiatus Asimov returned to science fiction with several novels attempting, for what reasons I don’t know and with what success I hesitate to say, to combine all his futures into one.

⁽²⁾ Without rereading the book, I nevertheless tend to doubt. When I google “Susan Calvin” I find a number of references to the Susan Calvin of the book, but “Del Spooner” only gives me the Will Smith character.