In my discussion of the movie Kill Command, it was defined as Dog Soldiers with robots. Although I wouldn’t say it is as good as the former, it was for the most part an entertaining watch. The characters, however, seem to miss that little touch that would make Kill Command one of the movies to look forward to watching as Dogs Soldiers does.
Kill Command takes place in the near future where the economy and society are slowly evolving towards producing killer robots. Steven Love, head of the Harbinger Corporation’s Military Bioengineering Division, is an advanced cybernetic reprogrammer and servicer. In this case, Katherine Mills is played by Vanessa Kirby. Katherine has a transformation that allows her to discover something that is wrong with the machines in place at a site within an undisclosed military training island. She projects a unit together with a team of soldiers sent to the island for a two day training exercise. However, upon arrival, they discover that they have been cut off from both local and global communication networks. Although their first training exercise is effective, their sentry goes missing within the first night. Ultimately, the soldiers find themselves in a battle for survival.
It’s clear that the film draws inspiration from other notable science fiction films, including Alien. The comparison between Mills and Bishop is striking but her role is primarily to evaluate and service the robots. Still, while there are a lot of comparisons to be made, I didn’t find Kill Command suffering from over-saturation as many films do.
On the contrary, one of the reasons why the film doesn’t quite grab your attention like Dog Soldiers or Alien is with character development. There are scattered mentions of their pasts, but nothing elaborate. This holds especially true for a survival movie, which this is, and one that already has its audiences and critics rooting for it. To their credit, they are not utter caricatures or paper thin, but they don’t fully fit the three-dimensional category either. Mill Command would have benefitted greatly from more flesh on their bones.
The rivalry between Mills and Captain Damien Bukes (Thure Lindhardt) is evident, but the movie fails to delve deeper into the matter. The cyborgs, or augmented people, and full humans surely live side by side, but their hatred and fear are not fully outlined. We are also given very limited information on how this society was able to get to this point. It is somewhat unclear why men are set against machines in their training drills, instead of other machines which men control. Kill Command, would most certainly have fared much better with a bit more attention to detail in the creation of the world in the film, which regrettably is not there.
This is not to say you will not be engaged in the action of which there is much to happen. I found myself exclaiming with shock at the deaths of several characters as I witnessed them die. However, it was only the first initial surprise attacks that caught me, it began to fall off in quality thereafter. But I was very optimistic too when they turned out to be trapped in the facility. I adore a bit of confined action, but for some inexplicable reason, they chose not to employ that isolated zone to raise the intensity. The action in Kill Command is fascinating for sure, but it is nothing particularly remarkable that you would be talking about sometime in the future. It sometimes comes off as a little bit like a budget bay movie, with a lot of visuals but no real power to it to make it pop.
In the realm of special effects, Kill Command is impressive, especially considering the budget was significantly lower than what one would expect from these heavily CGI based films. Behemoth spiders as machines are frightening to watch. Although the fights can be quite robotic now and then, they are still highly engaging. Naturally, there is not much close-quarters fighting between the opposing sides, making it unnecessary to zoom in on the machines. However, the closing sequence does have some impressive visuals that capture that old sci-fi movie look. In Kill Command, there are a few instances, however, where it does not appear too polished, but this is minor and easily forgiven when you consider the quality of the rest of the visual effects.
Indeed, they were able to torpedo the ending where it appeared all hope was lost, and in which they thoroughly enjoyed watching the action. In conjunction with this, they do not shy away from demonstrating how ruthless the machines can be, and they spared them for a specific reason so that was a nice addition. I did, however, have one issue in particular that, to me, seems a pet peeve. They set themselves up for a sequel and, yes, that is something you simply know is coming from ten blocks away. But like many problems that come with Kill Command, it is not strictly derivative, the story could just be a lot more imaginative than it is.
What action aficionados can look forward to in the future is Kill Command, an enjoyable action sci-fi that does not leave out entertaining death summaries and superior machine CGI set pieces. Impressive as this may seem, it is devoid of the artistry and device sophistication that makes them appealing.
To watch more movies visit Fmovies
Also Watch for more movies like:
