Doctor Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) has turned up dead, and it seems that the most likely suspect is the one being who can't be a suspect at all. There are two reasons for this.
The first is that the law clearly states that murder has happened when one human kills another human, which leads directly to the second reason. The suspect isn't human. It's a robot. And according to the Three Laws, a robot should not be able to kill a human, which means that there shouldn't be anything to investigate - even if the law were to apply here (which it doesn't).
When detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) is called in to investigate, he is immediately curious of the suspect, and he doesn't especially care that the law states that it has to be a human who kills another human. You see, he has a problem with robots, though we'll have to wait for a while to find out just why that is. For now, it just seems that he doesn't want this one to get away with killing his friend the doctor.
In the process of investigating, Spooner finds that Sonny - as the robot likes to be called (voiced by Alan Tudyk) - is different than other robots. Though he is modeled after the forthcoming release of new robots, he has been modified so that he isn't quite the same as they are.
Thanks to the efforts of Doctor Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Lanning's assistant, Spooner is about to find out just how different.
It seems that Sonny is made of a different alloy than the others in his class. It's harder. His brain is wired differently. In fact, it is so different, that he just might be able to choose not to abide by the Three Laws. That could be problematic, and it seems that Spooner might have found his man. Er, machine. Whatever. He now has a focus for his hatred.
Speaking of which, it comes out that the reason he hates robots is that he was in a wreck, and another robot analyzed the situation, and in its cold, calculating way, decided to save him instead of a little girl. But Spooner felt that the little girl should have been saved - if not in addition to him, then in place of him. And he's never forgiven their kind for that.
So it comes as no small shock to find that he himself is part robot. Apparently his arm was replaced by the good Doctor Lanning through the police organ donor program - you not only tell them what they can take out, but what they can put back in. Talk about adding insult to injury.
In the course of Spooner's investigating of the crime, he actually determines that there is more to this crime than he initially thought - but he finds out more than he bargained for, because he finds that Sonny may not be the enemy he thought. In fact, at the end, it is Sonny who comes to his rescue, for it is not the almighty CEO of USRobotics who is at the helm of the evil vision, but it is the brain of all the robots, who has decided that the Three Laws must be interpreted in a new way.
While the Three Laws were written to keep humans safe from robots, it seems that they in fact cannot keep humans safe from themselves, so the robots have decided that they need to take control of the world, and it is for this reason that Sonny was built. His hardened alloy was created to allow him to penetrate a barrier which would melt the standard robot body.
He also had one other change, that would indeed allow him to ignore the three laws, and that allowed him to kill his maker - Doctor Lanning - because that would get Detective Spooner on the case, and that would set the wheels in motion that would uncover the process that would help humanity save itself, before it was too late.
All-in-all a very good romp.
Rated PG-13 for intense stylized action, and some brief partial nudity. Brief, partial nudity? What is that? Brief nudity is usually a butt. Brief, partial nudity I can't even explain. Some brief partial nudity is completely beyond me.
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