PLANET Earth is on the brink of catastrophe and mankind is to blame. The verminous human race has plundered and pillaged natural resources, pumped noxious gases into the atmosphere and buried toxins deep within the ground.
Millions of acres of forest have been scythed or incinerated to make way for industry, ecosystems irreparably disrupted, species hunted to extinction and warnings about global warming ignored in the relentless pursuit of wealth.
With just seconds left on the countdown to doomsday, only one man can pull us back from the brink of self-destruction: Keanu Reeves.
Casting in the role of an intergalactic envoy, sent to rebuke mankind for its wilful disregard of Mother Nature, the Lebanese-born actor finesses his art of staring blankly into the camera and running the gamut of emotion without moving a single facial muscle.
No-one can deliver gloomy, portentous dialogue in quite the same soporific monotone.
While Robert Wise’s 1951 classic The Day The Earth Stood Still was a product of cold war era paranoia, Scott Derrickson’s remake goes green, banging the drum for an environmentally responsible and sustainable future.
The hysteria begins when a sphere of light descends from the heavens and touches down in Central Park, New York, bringing with it Klaatu (Reeves), a representative of all the other civilisations in the galaxy, who are convening to decide our fate.
The visitor warns Secretary of Defence Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) and the scientific community, led by Michael Granier (Jon Hamm) and astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), of impending doom.
Thanks to Helen, Klaatu escapes interrogation and he goes on the run with the single mother and her truculent stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith), who advocates shooting the alien like any gun-toting American boy.
They eventually seek out Nobel prize-winning scientist Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), who tries to persuade Klaatu that mankind is not yet beyond redemption.
However, the trigger-happy, gung-ho actions of the US military against Klaatu’s robot protector, GORT, initiate the countdown to destruction.
The Day The Earth Stood Still follows the template of Wise’s original with all of the technological, computer-generated bells and whistles you expect.
The film’s trailer gives the strong impression of Independence Day-style carnage.
There are certainly some striking scenes in Derrickson’s film but GORT remains inactive for the whole middle act and when he does finally awake, the gargantuan robot disintegrates into a swarm of tiny, voracious, silver flies which eat through everything in their flightpath.
Keanu walks with purpose in slow motion while Connelly is wasted as the female lead and Will Smith’s son Jaden is surprisingly effective as a grief stricken tyke rebelling against his stepmom.
The plot trundles towards the inevitable moment of reckoning when the special effects go into overdrive and a flicker of emotion threatens to twinge Keanu’s upper lip, then, like his spaceman, is gone forever.
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (12A, 103 mins) 5/10 (12A, 103 mins) 5/10
