Negative Positive
Title: Gruner can't save this one
Review: After watching this movie, I felt a bit cheated. I'm a big fan of Olivier Gruner and I liked him in Nemesis, but Automatic is nowhere near the film that Nemesis is. Yes, Gruner plays the man/machine character very well, but even he can't save this film. I'm not real finicky about film details but this one is definitely not a 4 star film by ANY stretch of the imagination. The film's imagery consisted mainly of closeup shots of prop machine guns going off and sequences of bad guys' hands pulling grenade pins. The film's dialog was about as engaging as it's imagery. Even when playing the man/machine guy in other films, Gruner is still able to add depth and humanness to the character. However, he was not able to achieve this in Automatic. Blame it on poor writing, poor directing, or whatever. I'm still a fan of Olivier Gruner but this film just doesn't have it.
Is the review positive or negative? 