CinemaSerf

In best Christopher Lloyd style, a man arrives in a busy diner claiming to be from the future. He (Sam Rockwell) also claims that this is the umpteenth time he has been to the place, at the same time, trying to recruit some of the diners to join him on a quest to thwart the ultimate takeover of society by an AI whizzkid. Of course they think he’s a few bricks short of a load, but when he reveals his detonator a few take notice. He already knows whom he wants, and whom he doesn’t and so armed with a reluctant band of “volunteers” and, for the first time, “Susan” (Juno Temple) off they set on a series of adventures that must keep them out of the reaches of the police and get them into the home of the young boy. Rockwell leads this entertainingly, if at times a little over-exuberantly, and he gels well with a Temple who wouldn’t have looked out of place atop a wedding cake. As their quest takes more shape, so does the message it makes no bones about delivering, and for any still sceptical about the manner in which mankind is sleepwalking into an artificially crafted, managed and controlled existence, this serves as a sharply written and potently acerbic critique on just how easy we might be manipulated in the future by the input of one innocent and fully functional young brain and machines that can thereafter write their own rules - for themselves and for us, too. A final plaudit has to go to the unnervingly menacing Artie Wilkinson-Hunt whose sparing contribution at the denouement gives the butter-wouldn’t-melt look on his face a distinctly unpleasant aftertaste. It is a bit long, and occasionally it does lose it’s way as we whittle down the characters, video-game style, but it’s an innovative story that ought to ring alarm bells.