thepinkrabbit
first to respond to a previous reviewer 7 aren't C's ! Here is how it works ( in France and others European countries you get marks from 0 to 20 not letters as letters are to subjective and scientifically irrelevant ). so A is 16 to 20 that means 8 to 10 on a 10 scale, B is 13 to 15 = 6.5 - 7.5 C is 10-12 that is 5 to 6, D is 7 -9 means 3.5 to 4.5 , E is 2-3 F, is 0 to 1.5 . ( of course you can tweak it with + ,- and 0.5 points). so a C means 5 to 6 on IMDb not a 7. This movies is just awful for any scientific atheist. In a word if you are not an American then this movie was not made for you. It's a just the same old moralist science against Christians.. Don't do God job or you'll be in trouble. that kind of stupid crap they are so fond of in Texas and all catholics / religious crazy states. It's also a spin off of a small budget UK movies : in that movies 2 parents lost their children, a religious guys comes to help them : they should provide a bone to recreate the child, but the child must not be dead for more than 12 months. they proceed , but the child becomes devils and kill the mother : the reason was they lied to the "priest" as the child was dead for more than 12 months. Here it's about the same story but on a SF-scientist point of view. so really a waste of time.
Falconeer
While "Godsend" is no masterpiece, one cannot deny that the subject matter of this film; human cloning/genetic engineering is fascinating stuff indeed. This film is actually nicely crafted, and raises a lot of questions about the scientific and moral issues of cell cloning to recreate a 'duplicate' of an existing person. Who would not be tempted to accept an offer to have their recently deceased child returned to them, by some scientific miracle? Unfortunately for one young couple, their savior, (who comes in the form of a brilliant doctor portrayed effectively by Robert Deniro) has a hidden agenda of his own. The young son is killed at the age of 8. For eight years their child appears fine, until the anniversary of the cloned boy's death. Plagued by strange memories of his own death, the child, Adam begins to sink into a world of scary and confusing dreams and hallucinations, hinting at his previous life, and violent death. "Godsend" is not a flashy, bloody horror movie, but rather a slow moving, cerebral mystery/horror, that makes the viewer think, and wonder. Some might call "Godsend" Hollywood's "anti-cloning propaganda film," but whatever the purpose of this film, it is interesting and thought-provoking all the same. Worth a look for those interested in the subject matter.
Robert J. Maxwell
Slow, spooky, and generic. Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos are the parents of eight-year-old Adam (Cameron Bright), a nice kid who gets run over and snuffed at the age of eight. The parents are approached at the zenith of their mourning by Dr. Wells (Robert DeNiro) who stutters a lot about how bad he knows they must feel about Adam's death but he -- DeNiro -- can assuage their grief simply be illegally cloning the kid. I don't know whether it was because DeNiro, with his gray beard, was trying to enact deviousness or whether he was just nervous, but I wouldn't have bought a used car from him. And -- for good reason, as it turns out.After the delivery (a clumsy scene), he has the family move to his medical park in Vermont and finds a decent job at the local high school for Kinnear. Well, things go swimmingly until the new Adam reaches the age at which the original Adam was turned into road kill, and then strange things begin happening to him, and the strange things ripple outward until their implications or effects involve the faux parents and DeNiro and everybody.Before the second Adam has his eighth birthday, the movie is sluggish and dark, with pauses for expressions of doubt. Arguments, for instance, between husband and wife over the desirability of the procedure. Assurances from DeNiro, which grow a little less reassuring each time he utters them, as in, "Well, you never know. We were certain about how he'd act up until the time of Adam's death, but now we're on our own." The medical gobbledygook lost me here and there, and I have to admit my attention wandered from time to time. The initial harbingers of trouble were kind of interesting. Adam, smiling, tells Kinnear, "You know what? I don't think I like you anymore." Then he tells Dad he's joking. And, for no reason, he begins to spit on the other kids at school and on the teacher. So far, so good. These are all things that have to do with a change in character and are plausible enough. Take my kid, for instance. He used to spit on me a lot until I beat him senseless. Oh, sure, "Child abuse!", you cry -- but let me tell you. That kid is a famous otolaryngologist today, specializing in the diseases of rich ears. You'd think he'd call once in a while, though.Then the movie changes tactics if not strategy. It's as if someone had noticed that there was a button on the console that said "Special Effects" and had impulsively pushed it. Adam has "night terrors" and integrated hallucinations and whatnot, and we get to see them all through his eyes, accompanied by sounds of clashing metal, screams, ominous elephantine rumbles, zaps, and other stings. The kid can't seem to blink his eyes without the sudden BANG of cymbals. The weird photography, colors, MTV editing, and images aren't original in any way. There are allusions to "The Omen," "The Shining," "The Exorcist," "Psycho," and probably a couple of others I missed during periods of microsleep.Greg Kinnear turns in a decent performance as Dad, and so does Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Mom. (What kind of a name is that, anyway? Half Dutch and half Greek? One imagines a typical dinner at her home -- waterzooey followed by baklava.) Cameron Bright isn't bad either, for someone his age, although he exudes no magnetism whatever. The outstanding performance, as so often, is DeNiro's. It's just plain terrible. He tries but he's simply not convincing as the mad scientist he turns out to be.
