Grade (C-)
With such a great cast and interesting premise the result was surprisingly routine.
“MORGAN” stars; Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Paul Giamatti, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Boyd Holbrook, Brian Cox, Michelle Yeoh. It is directed by Luke Scott, the son of talented director Ridley Scott. The story follows a risk-management consultant who is sent out to a remote facility of observe and determine whether or not an artificially created humanoid, will be deemed for termination.
I had some anticipation for this film. I love science-fiction movies, the trailers to this movie looked very interesting, but in the end it was a routine walk in the park for the genre. The cast on paper had great potential as well, but the script did not utilize them very well at all. Kate Mara was solid in the lead but how she was directed, only helped reveal her place in the story-line, long before it should have.
Anya Taylor-Joy was very good in her performance for what the role called on but it was not exactly captivating either, and in the end, was barely serviceable. Giamatti was fun in this role but had nothing close to enough screen-time to make much of an impact. As for Holbrook, Yeoh, and Leigh, they pretty much did all they could do with the stock characters. They make the most out of the material in presence alone, but do not elevate the characters.
Toby Jones and Brian Cox were all under used as well. Now I know you can’t take all these cast members and allow them to dominate one film. But in a story with so many great names at its disposal, it was shocking to see that virtually none of them were able to pull the common story to a more entertaining level.
The script was in the end the biggest hindrance to this movie. It was routine, overly predictable at times, and with no freshness to the theme, it was difficult to generate much interest in it. You can see the progression of scenes follow a recycled path for the genre and characters make the decisions you will expect them to. The cast were not sleepwalking through their roles, but they didn’t bring much energy. Almost as if they even felt this was a been-there-done, that TV-movie script.
The tone of the movie was a little everywhere also. It was slow paced in the first-act building the foundation in a methodical way that built some mild tension. Then it goes to a couple jump-scare tactics to try and pull itself into the horror genre. Then wraps up like a tame action movie. The lack of focus on what it wanted to be just managed to pull me further out of the story in regards to overall interest.
It wasn’t a horrible movie but a very forgettable one to me. It tried to tell a story that for the most part was already told in “Ex Machina”, a film that did so much more effectively than this one. In the end, “Morgan” felt routine and lacking ambition to bring something new to this sub-genre and will all the things out there to watch, unfortunately the time watching this one was not worth it.
Time: 92 min
MPAA Rating: R (For brutal violence, and some language)