Reviewed by PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: *)
It would take many more words than I can be bothered writing to enumerate the inanities - narrative, cinematic and metaphysical - that clutter this deeply appalling film.
It takes an idea with plenty of conceptual traction - human cloning - and turns it into a cheap and nasty frightfest through which runs the quaintly medieval belief that when medicine messes with God's plan, it's the devil's cue to wreak havoc.
The once great Robert De Niro, whose choices of role in recent years suggest he may not be entirely in control of his faculties, plays a doctor who approaches Paul and Jessie Duncan (Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos) a bereft all-American couple after the improbable accidental death of their eight-year-old son. "I know this is a terrible time," he says, without blushing, before offering them the chance to have their boy back.
Well, a good-as-new copy. Paul, a biology teacher, is violently opposed to the idea ("It's illegal and potentially immoral," he fumes, though he doesn't explain what potential immorality is) but goes along with it for reasons that aren't clear. All hell, so to speak, breaks loose.
What follows is an endless assemblage of cheesy special effects and loud noises and the story, as it unfolds, manages the considerable feat of being both implausible and obvious. Climactic events are foreshadowed with an almost audible fanfare (a cobwebbed, abandoned shed here, a hatchet on a hook there) and the kid gets lines like "But I thought God made everything."
Hamm, resident director with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 80s, cannot be devoid of talent. But none of it is on show here. By the time we got to the burning Bible and the fight in front of the altar, I was thinking about what I would cook for dinner. Execrable.
CAST: Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro, Cameron Bright, Merwin Mondesir
DIRECTOR: Nick Hamm
RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes
RATING: M (contains violence and horror)
Godsend
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