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Movies & TV

Robot & Frank

ROBOT & FRANK (Sony, 2012) D: Jake Schreier, w/ Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NN Rating: NNNN


Frank Langella delivers a remarkable performance as Frank, a retired jewel thief with memory problems. There’s almost no difference between Frank alert and vague, so we can’t tell when he’s lying, and we don’t know whether he’s ill or just bored and lonely.

Frank’s son fears the worst, so he gets him a robot home care worker. (We’re somewhere in the near future.) Frank stops detesting the thing and perks up considerably when he discovers he can enlist it in robbery.

While the heists are funny, the story stays focused on Frank’s relationships with his adult children, the local librarian (Susan Sarandon) and the robot whose inner life begins to fascinate him.

At the end, that focus yields a complex mix of emotions and themes that makes Robot & Frank more memorable than the vast majority of movies featuring robots.

Writer Christopher Ford and director Jake Schreier devote their commentary largely to the limitations of low-budget shooting.

EXTRAS: Director and writer commentary. English, Spanish, Portuguese audio. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese subtitles.

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