Film Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still

by Damon Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

The Day the Earth Stood Still (12A, 103 mins)
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, John Cleese, James Hong
Directed by Scott Derrickson

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.

Casting in the role of an intergalactic envoy, sent to rebuke mankind for its wilful disregard of Mother Nature, Reeves 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 paranoia, Scott Derrickson’s remake goes green, banging the drum for an environmentally responsible 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 (Bates) and the scientific community, led by Michael Granier (Hamm) and astro-biologist Helen Benson (Connelly), of impending doom.

Thanks to Helen, Klaatu escapes and he goes on the run with the single mother and her truculent stepson Jacob (Smith), who advocates shooting the alien like any gun-toting American boy.

They eventually seek out Nobel prize-winning scientist Professor Barnhardt (Cleese), who tries to persuade Klaatu that mankind is not yet beyond redemption.