If you like imagining what the upcoming decades will look like, this futuristic movie is made for you. In an age of Cold War with China, two artifical intellgince engineers join hands to create a self-conscious machine. Such machines are then used by the Ministry of Defence as puppets to kill the enemies. But Vincent’s machine develops a relationship with him and in an episodic clash with the authorities, teams up with other machines to rebel and fight for their independence from the humans who have been exploiting them against the Chinese. But the crux of the movie fiddles with the mind-boggling issue of consciousness. The Machine sums it up well when Vincent tries to rob his created machine of all conciousness by prizing out a metallic chip from her skull. The movie makes us think: is an intelligent being necessarily conscious? Even the most advanced computers today in terms of the complexity of the operations they perform, cannot be expected to be concious. How far can programming then go? Can a robot be programmed to think on its own and make voluntary decisions? After all, what seemed science fiction only a few decades ago is everyday science today. In an age where nothing seems impossible, is there any limit to what science can achieve? Can conciousness be embedded into unconcious matter? What is it that differentiates conscious atoms from unconscious ones? If atoms are self-aware, what is it that combines them into an entity called ‘You’? Perhaps nothing but imagination. The movie also poses several questions about morality. The machine in the movie is enticed to kill a man in order to prevent him from doing a wrong, but decides to only injure his arm because it isn’t ethical, according to her, to kill somebody who is no longer a threat to anyone. Does conciousness automatically lead to morality? That doesn’t seem likely. If not, how does it form? Where does it reside within us reside within us? Is it a function of nature or nurture? The movie may have been more interesting to watch if unnecessary background music had been edited out, but is interesting anyway, especially for science fiction geeks. What perhaps disappoints is the lack of origninality in the direction of events and cinematography. The entire plot seems a bit overdone especially when it subtly demonizes China under the garb of robotic warfare. It’s time Hollywood moves ahead of its obsession with the evil East. \