Mladen and Del review ‘Kill Command’

Image courtesy of Vertigo Films.

“Kill Command” Starring Vanessa Kirby as singularity Mills, Thure Lindhart as somewhat unlikeable Bukes, David Ajala as whoa-I-didn’t-expect-him-to-die-so-early Drifter, Mike Noble as hick Goodwin, Bentley Kalu as man-I-wish-I-had-those-biceps Robinson, and others. Directed by Steven Gomez. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Not Rated. Prime.

Plot summary: A squad of marines and a civilian are ordered to take part in a training exercise on a remote island. The purpose of the mission is unclear until the squad realizes they’re on the island to train a platoon of droids to fight like humans. The trouble? It’s a live fire exercise and the droids are OK with taking lives. Very human, indeed.

Spoilers: Everywhere, including the basic facts write-up and plot summary above

Mladen’s take

Unbelievable and, probably unintentional. Del, made me happy by suggesting we review “Kill Command.” He could’ve asked that we tackle “50 Shades of Gray.” Or, “Eat Pray Love.” Or, “Melanoma.” Excuse me, “Melania.” Instead, he chose this nifty 2016 movie that anticipated the soldier training equivalent of what we now know as Large Language Models.

Like LLMs steal, plagiarize, and unethically re-configure creations produced by talented humans, the quadrupedal droids in “Kill Command” Study Analyze Reprogram – SAR – the combat tactics of the marines.

Embedded with the marines is a human, Mills, who has been chipped. She is laptop, router, and Bluetooth in the organic body – a nice one at that – of a high‑level female scientist who developed the bloodthirsty droids for a robotics company.

So, we have set the scene for the mostly predictable tension between Mills and the marines. Can they trust her to help them? Must she be protected though it risks the lives of the squad? Is singularity Mills able to control the droids, to stop them from whacking the marines one at a time, but declines to take that step because she wants to witness how her AI‑driven metal warriors learn? All fair questions that get duly answered as “Kill Command” scoots along at a nice pace with a little bit of suspense here and there.

The beauty of “Kill Command,” however, is not the way the humans adapt to the menace of the gun-toting droids and their multi-blue-eyes leader. The film’s merit is the way the droids are presented, though I’m not sure that was consciously the director’s goal. The droids observe the marines continuously. They mimic the combat tactics of the marines. But, they never demonstrate humanity. Old Blue Eyes shows no loyalty to his underlings. There’s no hesitation to send them forward to get knocked off by a sniper round, or get claymore‑ed. The grunt droids show no hesitation to run into the line of fire or an open space while engaged. They never seek cover. And, there’s no apparent thoughts of mortality among the droids or their leader. The droids remain machines no matter how well their AIs SAR away.

“Kill Command” has weaknesses.

I’m still trying to figure out how Old Blue Eyes sweats, if that’s what a scene shows. There’s also a brief sequence where the leader droid seems to bleed from the seams of the clear shield covering its “face.” Or, maybe, I ain’t recalling that accurately.

A couple of the marines aren’t all that likeable. The couple who get droid-ed fairly early in the movie are.

And, there’s the ending. Two marines survive. Mills is alive but unconscious or, more accurately, off-switched because she got EMP-ed and, possibly, hacked by Old Blue Eyes before it expired from a big-caliber bullet to the face. What do the marines do? Board an unmanned flying droid transport to get off the island. Really? Most of your squad was offed by semi-thinking, no‑feeling robots but you willingly embark a pilotless aircraft that, for all you know, was built by the same company that developed and fielded Old Blue Eyes. Come on, considering the squad’s merciless encounter with AI, wouldn’t avoiding drones of any sort be wise while you think about what to do next?

This cool little movie is an A‑double‑minus. I can’t bear to give it a B+ because, despite its flaws, it works as commentary about the path mankind is trudging as AI takes control of the choices we make and the lives we lead.  

Del’s take

“Old Blue Eyes,” Mladen? I guess that beats “Old Yellow Teeth.”

It’s purely coincidental I chose a shitty knock-off of “Aliens” and “Robocop” that pleased you, Mladen. I would never, EVER consciously do such a thing. You’d be as insufferable as the people I see online who really do believe Donald J. Trump is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. I wonder … if Jesus suddenly appeared at the White House, would Trump hand him over to ICE?

That’s my token political slap to the back of the head. Now, on to something really stupid, “Kill Command.” It’s not that stupid but throughout I kept asking myself, “How would James Cameron have handled this?” The answer was never way the Steven Gomez handled it.

I will agree with you, Mladen, on one point: The movie’s overriding theme, that AI will be the death of us all, is spot-on, maybe not the way “Kill Command” imagines it but spot-on just the same. In “Kill Command” the AIs are armed robots who want to destroy human beings … not a great way to start the day but yes, at least that’s a fairly straight up, in-your-face mode of conflict. The real AI killers are the ones we can’t see – the ones who lurk in the shadows, who twist and distort the truth just enough to make it seem real and plausible and easy to digest, so before you know it you’re believing the Earth really is flat, the moon landings were faked and climate change is a hoax. Those little bastards are the ones you gotta watch out for.

“Kill Command” reminded very, VERY much of “Aliens.” It’s the exact same set-up: A heroic female civilian enters a hazardous environment with a platoon of Marines. Things quickly go off the rails and team members die, one by one. Even the large robot, “Old Blue Eyes,” bears an uncanny resemblance to the giant, egg-laying queen in “Aliens.” We lack only a cute little girl by the name of “Newt.” (Which I never figured out. Who the hell would name their kid “Newt”? Then I learned “Newt” was a nickname. Ah, well, what can I say? My nickname in high school was “Chi-Com.” It’s a long story.)

But in other ways it reminded me of “Robocop” – the integration of man and machine in the form of Mills, the “super tech” who goes with the Marines on the island training exercise. She’s no Alex Murphy and at times must make some very human choices, but there’s enough of the machine in her to make me wonder where her allegiances lie.  I’m not saying “Kill Command” is derivative of “Aliens” and “Robocop,” but I don’t think inspired by would be wholly inappropriate.

I have a few quibbles. The Marines have guns that never run out of ammo. Sometimes the robots are great shots; other times they couldn’t hit the broad side of my oversized ass, which makes them horrible shots. And why do the Marines tolerate the presence of those intrusive flying robot surveillance drones? In this movie you can’t take a piss without a giant hovering eye suddenly showing up to watch your every dribble. And they’re so quiet! Have you ever heard a drone in real life? It sounds like a flying weed whacker.

My big gripe is that everything in “Kill Command” seems so rushed. In “Aliens” Cameron gave us a back story and let us get to know the characters as individuals. In “Kill Command” we get a perfunctory introduction to the protagonist and spear carriers, and then it’s off to the bloodletting. The action is fast-paced and there’s a lot of it, but do I care? Not really. I don’t know these folks – at least not like I know Hudson, Hicks, Bishop, Vasquez and Spunkmeyer.

I dunno, Mladen. Your standards are depressingly lower than mine. You gave “Kill Command” a weird, not-quite-A-, not-exactly-B+. I’m giving it a very clear and confident B-. It was an OK movie for sitting on my ass at the house and not paying anything extra, but overall it was “Aliens”-lite, and the ending, which I have not mentioned until just now, was just plain corny.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.