A-X-L (2018)

Directed & Written by Oliver Daly

Viewed in Theatre

 

Summary: A sociopath befriends a piece of military grade hardware and refuses to give it back. He is handsomely rewarded for these actions.

 

Seeing the trailer for A-X-L was quite a shocker. Not because of the subject matter, everyone loves dogs, and robots are cool so it makes sense to combine the two, but because the entire story around those things looked like a sketch show parody of a kids movie from years gone by. Everything, from the focus on motocross as the protagonist’s EXTREEEEEEEEME sport of choice, to the robot dog acting somewhat like a regular dog even though it is a war machine, to parents who just don’t understand, and the villains being standard military people, all of this is so wonderfully dated that the entire production seems like a throwback to the ETs and Short Circuits of the past. That’s not to make an immediate judgement though, because a throwback like this could be something that reminds us why these ideas worked in the first place, or it could be a reaffirmation on why we don’t see many movies like this anymore. So does A-X-L work? Let’s dig a bit deeper and find out! (But the answer is no.)

Robot Dogs and Hard Up Military Advisors

So the first things we see are promotional material from the secret research facility that made a dog robot. In this short video, they explain that dogs have always accompanied humans to war so it is only logical to design a robot dog that could accompany modern soldiers into combat so as not to risk the lives of…dogs? I mean, it’s not like this would reduce the number of troops needed if these robots need to have human direction in the field, which they are explicitly stated to need. Anyway, getting back on track, this video is followed by a sequence at the lab that A-X-L has just broken out of! That scene would have been way too scary for the kids, and expensive, so we just see the aftermath of A-X-L’s breakout where everything is broken and there are deep scratches in all the walls. The cleanup is interrupted by a military official calling the project director and giving him grief for their massive budget of seventy million dollars, an amount of money that is totally not chump change for the military. After this grief giving she exposits that the demo of A-X-L is being presented in two days, but that is too far away and she needs access to all of their information now! I have no idea why she can’t just wait the two days and collect all the information during the demonstration, but I’m no military bigwig so what do I know?

Time for the EXTREEEEEEEME SPORTS!

Our actual plot starts in a boring classic manner with a big Motocross race, the most popular sport of the early 2000s! During this race we learn that our hero, Miles, is down on his luck and poor, while his rival is the standard traditional rich bully who has the best bike and support team and equipment. During the first heat Miles’ bike gets damaged and they have no spare parts, because they’re very poor you see, and they go to try and borrow a part from the rich people group, but they won’t give him one! But things aren’t all terrible, because Sara, who hangs out with the rich crew, sneaks them a part because…they don’t really explain why? Also Miles picks up a drawing that she made and then discarded. So once they have the part Miles easily defeats the rich guy’s kid because when you have a rich father obsessed with winning, it means that you aren’t good at anything. So rich kid invites Miles to a party. Miles’ dad tells him to go because networking is important. Miles meets up with the lady who helped him there. They have no chemistry. Miles leaves the party and the next day goes out with rich kid to do off roading tricks that they can put online, but the rich kids’ posse sabotages his bike so it stalls in midair and crashes. Then they leave him in the middle of nowhere. Because they’re the bad guys, you see.

This is from the end of the movie. But it is an extreme jump. Also they crash instantly after this.

 

EXTREEEEEEEME Apathy.

Miles wanders through the desert and stumbles upon a scrapyard where A-X-L is hiding. Miles’ presence disturbs the robo-dog and there is a brief chase sequence that ends with A-X-L crashing into a pile of sharp metal bits. Miles nurses A-X-L back to health and the two form a bond over a few days in the desert. The girl Miles met goes to find him because the plot told her to and then she also forms a bond with the metallic murder machine. They all grow close together and romance and the beautiful connection between a man and his robot dog all happen before our eyes. But the people who built the dog want him back! So they try to get him back and….god I can’t do this anymore.

 

You’ve Seen This Movie Before.

Look, I’ve already spent too much time talking about the plot. You know what happens. This movie has been made many MANY times before. This plot is trying to scuttle past your notice by ripping off every ‘boy befriends thing he should not befriend’ movie without really understanding why any of those movies worked. I was so shocked by how standard everything is that I assumed this movie was in production for a long time and was only now released to try and recoup some of the investment they made. I was wrong. This was someone’s passion project. This is the director’s first feature length film and, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but it shows. Movies like this, the ones with standard plots, are dependant on bringing the viewer in immediately. Their characterization and pacing and world building have to be top notch so that we can care about the people in the story even if the story isn’t great. A lot of great movies are made in the details. This movie is unmade by its details.

 

Why Are These Here?

So I don’t recommend anyone actually watch this movie, but if you do then you may notice something fascinating, and that’s that this movie feels more like someone parodying a “young person bonds with thing they aren’t supposed to bond with” story than a story that was purposely written to have that feeling. Everything seems mildly off, in ways that only really make sense under one of two conditions, either they’re studio oversight of a script that had been laying around for a while or they were purposely put in to see if anyone would notice them and they didn’t. I will just list all the things that I’ve found to support this.

 

All The Small Things.

That one military lady is badgering these tech guys and commenting on the vast expenses of the project but it has only cost about seventy million dollars, which seems like a lot of money, but that kind of cash gets thrown around every day by military R&D, it really isn’t that big of a deal. There is a party that Miles goes to early on and it looks like a fair approximation of a crazy party (that is PG of course, there is no alcohol) but one really weird detail is that at this rockin’ party there is a six foot long sub. At a wild party. And the sub is uncut. I’m not saying I’m cool, but the last time I saw a sub that long at a party I was in grade school. I’m pretty sure that the kids these days aren’t buying giant subs for their parties and that detail is so out of place that it almost seems like a joke. At one point a Go-Pro gets strapped to someone and yes, we see POV footage from that camera (because all movies I discuss must have a found footage element to them) and that footage has a few weird things about it. The first is that the footage we see has a ‘view counter’, a little eyeball symbol with a number next to it, and I can’t find a single piece of footage shot from a Go-Pro that has that same icon on it. And also the view number is permanently at 1.5K, no matter what is happening it always has the same number of viewers! When they’re doing sick motocross stunts it has the same audience as when they’re just doing nothing and it’s not like that is only in one scene, you always see it! Very early on the military lady is discussing with the lead scientist about how A-X-L is a weapon designed to kill. When she says the word ‘Kill’ they play a dark musical sting. In case you were unsure of whether or not killing was a dark and/or serious thing to have happen. These things are all nitpicks and I’m sure that there are many errors like those in movies that I enjoy but that’s the point! When you’re engaged and watching a movie you may not notice that all the details aren’t right, but when there is just nothing happening on screen that is in any way interesting, the mind wanders.

Pic Unrelated.

 

EXTREEEEEEME Disregard For Safety.

And it isn’t just minor details that seem off, entire character motivations and emotions seem off. Miles is just a sociopath. Part of that has to do with the actor, who is just not giving the kind of performance you want in this role, but a great deal of that characterization comes from the things he does. After Miles befriends Sara they bond with A-X-L at the place that she does all her graffitti, and while there the rich kid shows up, for reasons that are so dumb I don’t even want to explain them. After he shows up he starts doing rich kid bully stuff, which feels strange for a reason I will get to very soon, and Miles emerges to defend Sara. I assumed that Miles would either get into a brief altercation with the rich kid or he would use A-X-L to scare the rich kid away. Miles has A-X-L attack rich kid. A-X-L pins rich kid to the ground, which causes some concern because we just saw that A-X-L is heavy enough to STOP A TRUCK FROM DRIVING WHILE HE IS IN THE BED OF IT and is clearly powerful enough to just collapse this guy’s ribcage, and Miles is just all smiles about this and is really getting off on the amount of power that A-X-L gives him. Also this is clearly intentional because right after the rich kid leaves Sara yells at Miles about how his thoughtlessness and love of power make him no different than rich kid. And then that point is never brought up again.

 

The face of a monster.

 

Pieces of Competent Writing Buried Within.

This theme of ‘let’s bring it up and then never discuss it again’ is omnipresent throughout this film. So many ideas like, Miles not being a good person, A-X-L not being able to be a friend because he is a murder machine, A-X-L should go back to the military because he is a piece of hardware, these are all brought up in dialogue but they never go anywhere with any of them. But the strangest thing is that any of those ideas would have made a far more compelling movie than the one that A-X-L ended up being. I don’t know if this was just a first time writer-director being overwhelmed with what they’re doing and not able to keep their ideas sorted or if Daly wanted to make something more cerebral about growing up and personal growth and how people relate to each other/technology but the studio who financed the film said “we will produce your movie but it has to be more child friendly”. This is terrible as a kids’ movie but I am genuinely interested in finding out if the writer-director intended to go a different direction with it, and if so, what that direction would have been.

 

Just…..Don’t.

These small hints at what could have been are even more tempting when you look at the movie as a whole and realize its biggest problem, which is just that A-X-L is about nothing. Miles never really learns anything, except that stealing is awesome and will get you into college. He learns this because the government pays him and Sara, who also has money problems, loads of cash to not tell people about A-X-L. Thank god that all the kids out there are learning that if they find a piece of advanced military hardware that they should keep it, so long as it looks and acts vaguely like a dog. Not that any kids actually saw this movie, considering how hard it is flopping. This movie came out on August 24 and less than two weeks from then it is down to one showing a day at all the theatres near me. I’m actually really glad I saw it when I did because it definitely will not last past this Thursday. So even if A-X-L is somehow still playing at a theatre near you when you read this, please don’t see it, not even out of morbid curiosity. You will not be entertained.

 

 

 

I do not own any of the images in this review. They are used under Fair Use doctrine and are the property of their copyright holders.