Replicas

This is a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie in so many ways. 

First the most obvious: it’s about a man of science who via an unorthodox experiment chooses to defy nature and mortality. 

I say man of science, because while Keanu’s character Will Foster has plenty of bizarre technology at his disposal, the screenplay is noticeably almost entirely science-free. 

Then there’s the fact that it consists of several not-entirely-compatible plot premises seemingly sown together. 

At the start the movie seems to be about a man in a medical facility in Puerto Rico attempting to transfer the conscious minds of dead soldiers into a robot. As quick as a flash however, it’s suddenly about a bereaved man cloning his dead family in order to create synthetic replicas that may or may not think and act like the originals. 

This conceit surely has the most potential and Replicas may well be a textbook example of an enticing premise made lastingly toxic by one epicly-bad implementation. 

Should we have expected any less from the people who brought us London Has Fallen and The Day After Tomorrow?  (Not to mention 'From the producers of...') 

The lameness of the last thirty minutes or so can best be explained by suggesting an alternative final act of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece in which the doctor and his creature have to escape from an assortment of incompetent goons dispatched to kill them by Frankenstein’s boss, and for reasons which remain largely opaque to say the least. 

And yet, it was vaguely entertaining. The Keanu effect again, perhaps.