This was one of the rare moments that I did not see a movie till more than a week playing in the theater and not because I was not available, but just because I was a bit doubtful and felt it was a bit late since it had played in other countries for 2 months. However, yesterday I noticed that the movie was still playing in the nearest theater from my home and when I asked my wife whether she wanted to see it, she did not object and left the decision to me. So we decided to buy the tickets and give it a try. Well let us get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Miles Hill (Alex Neustaedter - Colony TV series, Shovel Buddies etc) was a dirt racer who was working as part time mechanic with his father Chuck Hill (Thomas Jane - The Predator, The Mist etc). Miles was having a bit of unfriendly competition with a high profile & very rich racer named Sam Fontaine (Alex MacNicoll) but he grew quite close to a girl named Sara (Becky G - Power Rangers, Gnome Alone etc) whose mother worked for Fontaine family.
During a time when Miles was showing off his skills in a deserted place, he was left behind and later on met with some kind of robotic dog which he tried to help and ultimately became friends. The dog was actually a military experiment by Craine Industries led by Andric (Dominic Rains - Marvel's Agents of SHIELD TV series etc). It was referred to A-X-L (Attack eXploration Logistics) and ran away from the Craine's headquarters. Andric who was pressurized the US Armies had to acquire AXL back using whatever means necessary even if it would endanger civilian lives.
Meanwhile Miles who grew attached with AXL had to choose whether to keep AXL or returned him to the rightful owner. So what would happen to these two? Find them all in this science fiction adventure movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was having kind of a slow pace. The beginning to introduce AXL was brief, but then the characters introduction were taking longer time than I expected, especially those party scenes which I thought was a bit dragging and did not get right to the point fast enough. After quite some time, when Miles finally met with AXL for the first time, then the story became more exciting. The relationship between those two were nice enough to see.
As a science fiction movie, I thought the special effects of AXL creation was pretty decent and not seemed very lousy considering the very low budget this movie had (I noticed it only had like USD 10 million budget). AXL seemed quite alive and I thought his movements were quite realistic (even my wife thought that from afar, AXL looked like a real dog). Although since it was a robotic dog afterall, we should not expect any expressions shown from AXL face.
Of all the characters appearing in this movie, I thought the one that quite stood up was the main antagonist Andric who was played quite nicely by Dominic Rains. While Thomas Jane who was the big name in this movie unfortunately did not impress me. I personally thought Alex Neustaedter was not bad in a lead role, however Becky G's character seemed a bit out of place. I thought the movie maker made her seemed a bit too "eager" to get close to Miles. The rest of the cast were having too little screen time to leave any impression to me.
Apart from some of the flaws on the character and a bit cliche story line, the movie did have its positive points. One of them was the nice relationship between Miles & AXL and the emotional ending (that affected my wife) which I thought was the highlight of this movie. There were a bit of action but not the real suspenseful kind, and were not too memorable. This movie also felt more like for teenagers rather than what I thought would be for the whole family. Oh, the sound effects I thought was quite good for this film and from what I understood from my wife's friend who had seen the movie before us, there was no mid or post end credit scenes in here.
Overall I thought this movie was just average, there was nothing really special that would make us truly remember the film in years to come, although it did had a nice enough ending. It would probably be a lot nicer had the relationship between Miles and AXL be shown a little bit earlier and we get to see more of them. Anyway, if you are looking for a very light teenager movie where a robotic dog was one of the main cast and you do not mind the standard story, then you could give this a try. But if you prefer to see a heavier movie with deeper relationship between a man and a real animal, then I think you might not enjoy this one.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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