Godsend Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)May 19th, 2004
Godsend (2004): *1/2 out of ****
Directed by Nick Hamm. Screenplay by Mark Bomback. Starring Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert de Niro, and Cameron Bright.
by Andy Keast
"Godsend" takes a large number of ridiculous ideas and treats them all with deadly seriousness. One of those ideas is that a human clone can retain past memories belonging to the owner of the original cell. Therefore, if one were to create a clone from the fingernail of Bill Clinton, that person would have memories of growing up in Arkansas, and so on. With millions of Americans routinely getting all of their world history, science, sociology, psychology and philosophy from the movies and television, this is another sad installment to their unending misinformation. After seeing it, I wanted to visit my local university's schools of biology and genetics, if only to ask their students what they think. To them, this movie must play like a comedy.
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn Stamos are the parents of Adam (Cameron Bright). As helpful previews have pointed out, Adam is killed in a freak car accident. Overcome with grief, they are accosted by a doctor (Robert de Niro) who has developed to a procedure that could create an "exact duplicate" of their son using already existing cells. De Niro's pitch to them results in the
movie's funniest scene, where Kinnear exclaims: "What you're asking is illegal,
not to mention…potentially immoral!" Of course, if they don't go along with it, there's no movie. So we're supposed to believe that these two people will follow a complete stranger into some bizarre experimental procedure. We're supposed to believe that these people will precipitously leave their family and
friends behind forever and move to some streamlined Ira Levin neighborhood to raise their new kid. We're supposed to believe that this "revolutionary" process involves an accelerated pregnancy. Considering all this, it's understandable that their little bundle of joy begins to act on a propensity to
violence, and why not? Nothing else in the film makes sense, why should this?
There's no explanation for why the psychotic behavior begins precisely at the age of eight except for some "voodoo science" that can only exist in sci-fi thrillers as we know them today. Uncountable elements of nature/nurture theory
are left unexplored. Revelatory scenes are lame in that they feel *very* scripted (all the dialogue about ethics and whathaveyou) and are not performed that well. There is a scene where Kinnear has his head cracked open, and lies there unconscious, blood everywhere, only to spring into action to save Stamos from death in what's now become a horror/suspense film cliché: the Shed of a Thousand Weapons. These are sheds out in the middle of the woods with walls lined not only dangerous farm equipment, but several spiny, rusty, very sharp objects that seem to have no practical use in real life unless you're some kind
of vampire hunter.
If you want a loud thriller about blanketed memories of murder, rent "Dead Again." If you want a thriller that approaches the subject of cloning with care and intelligence, rent "Gattaca." In fact, you could use "Gattaca" in a compare and contrast with this film, and quickly realize what a contrived and half-assed job "Godsend" does with its subject. Did it ever occur to the screenwriter that it's a little too palpable for a movie about cloning to have a character named Adam? Or to feature a spiral staircase so blatantly? C'mon.
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