Transcendence (2014)

A week after seeing Wally Pfister’s “Transcendence,” the flick barely registers in my brain. I vaguely recall the finale as insulting, and unfathomably boring, everything proceeding a slog lacking any remote urgency. That’s an unexpected turn for director Pfister, who served as DP on all of Chris Nolan’s films, including “Inception.” Johnny Depp is Will, an AI genius obsessed with loading a person’s consciousness to the Cloud because, I mean, that’s safe. When fate deals Will a blow, his scientist wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads hubs to a supercomputer lest she lose him forever. Will 2.0 takes his new environment too well, becoming a HAL high on Orwell: Watcher of all, raiser of dead, and controller of the Cloud, and clouds. The folks at Infowars might shake in fear. I yawned. See, Depp -– appearing like a ghostly sleep-deprived Max Headroom -- mumbles his lines and gets halfway creepy, but never dangerous. This film desperately needs danger. Skip HAL. Will becomes a lovesick Speak N’ Spell. I won’t spill the end, but know this: It defies logic in such a leap that it left me fuming. Artificial intelligence has never been slower. D+