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The first hour is dead boring, like a self-complacent Sam Peckinpah navel-gazing about his character build-up as a kind of therapy. Nothing much happens, at least nothing that would require 60 minutes. Good disciplined directors have been known to beef up characters with a couple of scenes, ellipses and cut to the chase. Here it is meet-cute and we're holding the candle for the best part of 60 minutes.

Then at last we get to Alfredo Garcia and it plays out pretty much like a routine western. Too straight to be really impressive if you already know the Wild Bunch with its direct yet grandiose style. All in a all the great cast saves it from looking totally anecdotal, or maybe only barely a prime example of the 'loser on steroids' genre.

One could do a side by side comparison of Looker and Coma. Coma is maybe less visionary - we hope - but very well executed and all that Michael Crichton achieved in his storytelling for Coma fells flat here.

Anyway to think that Michael Crichton was already anticipating this in 1975 - when he mentions first having the idea for Looker - that is almost half a century before it became a major issue for actors, makes it worth a watch by itself.

Worth watching indeed for the first scene - which maybe inspired Shane Black when he wrote Lethal Weapon? - who is a powerful hook, and later the scene when the female lead goes to visit her parents only to see them hardly interested in her and totally glued to the TV set.

Michael Crichton thought it was too disturbing a theme to treat as a dark thriller, unfortunately. The second half moves erratically and somewhat comically till the conclusion. Nobody thought about a remake because, well, this is no longer anticipation and it is very doubtful that deepfakes could be an effective plot element.

This is one of those movies I had maybe already watched many years ago but could not be absolutely sure. Memory did its work of weeding out the unsignificant stuff maybe.

Silent Running feels like a Twilight Zone episode blown out to feature length (bad) and wide-screen expectations (good). The premise is really flimsy, nothing much happens because it is just a very naive idea that is not developed into something bigger. So Bruce Dern is here to help make it look more intense and intelligent than it really is, and the sets and cinematography are also very impressive for a low budget. Sorry to be blunt but in the end it just looks like someone with half the IQ of Kubrick was impressed by (and inspired by his work on) 2001. Those cute droids don't hold a candle to HAL and all this sentimentalism feels quite misplaced beyond the stargate.