Movie Review Robot And Frank

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2012 – Spoiler alerts Rather a sweet, sad, comedy drama that is far from perfect but it is quite beautifully done. Frank Langella plays an ageing one time jewel thief cat-burglar, succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. His daughter works overseas and his son is exasperated by driving for ten hours a day every weekend to look in on Frank, but unwilling to consign his father to a home. The son hits on a solution, by leaving Frank in the hands of a dedicated robot-carer, (actress Racheal Ma in a costume designed by the team behind virtual musicians, Daftpunk). Frank initially hates the never named robot, until he finds that it does not understand the concept of law and persuades it to help him steal from wealthy capitalists who have closed the local library Frank loves. This leads to a police hunt where Frank has a choice of surrender to the authorities or erasing the robot’s memories so its databanks cannot be used to entrap him. Lovely low-key performances, but the robot not knowing the laws is unconvincing, though overall this a very nice, non-violent, inoffensive movie. My own thinking is that I that I would hate my family replacing their care with that of a machine though. Arthur Chappell