I can't tell you how many hours I've put into genre movies, like action, horror, sci-fi and I think I enjoy them and give a lot of credit. Then, occasionally -- rarely these days, a simple, economic film comes along and blows them all out of the water.
Robot & Frank did that for me.
In the near future, a retired cat burglar (Frank) with deteriorating mental health, is becoming increasingly difficult for his grown-up children to take care of. One of his children provides him with a robotic caretaker, to aid him in his mental and physical health. Frank at first, can't stand this thing, following him around, giving him orders and just pretty much imposing on every aspect of his life. That is, until, Frank discovers the robot has a talent for learning and the ability to use his knowledge. It doesn't take long before the cat burglar teaches his ways to the robot and the two become a team, planning and executing a heist.
I thought this would be some kind of Hollywood fodder: Machine learns about life from man, man learns about life from machine. It has SO much more than that.
The movie was charming, funny, profound and at times, really emotional.
I mentioned earlier that it was economic. A lot of the film is made up of master shots, so there's not a lot of fast cutting in between characters, allowing us to sit back and let the actors perform - which is such a pleasure to watch. Everyone in this movie was fantastic, the writing was clever and concise, with characters you become fond of in such little time, something happens in every scene and at 90 minutes, it never outstays it's welcome. The ending, which I won't give away, is very subtle and the best ending I have seen for a long, long time.
This is a deceptively clever film, very simply told and holds more depth than pretty much anything I've seen in the last 12 months. It is definitely something I shall watch again and again, I really can't recommend this enough.
So, quite obviously, I'm giving this a hard
FIVE FUCKS
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