Today's Life

I watched this short with a group of like-minded (SF freaks) friends. Its conclusion was greeted with a pensive, depressed silence. Would society really stoop to this kind of conduct? If it did, imagine being the poor soul caught up in this situation. Will Plunkett turns in a convincing performance you won't forget in a hurry. The special effects are great too. Just don't watch this if you're already feeling blue.

Today's Life is one of the few entertaining short films that's more about plot and less about symbolism. In just 13 minutes, it tells the story of a future NASA-like agency that sends out space ships filled with cloned astronauts to explore the far reaches of the galaxy. These clones are supposed to lack any memory of their life before being cloned, and function only as robots.

This is an emotional story because both the main character and the audience knows that he is about to be "terminated" once he finishes the job. It's a highbrow story because it makes the audience question the morality behind human cloning. Are human clones simply disposable objects without a soul, to be thrown away when they are no longer needed?

This is exactly the kind of story that belongs in the short film format rather than as a theatrical motion picture. Only this format allows the filmmakers to concentrate on just one character, with virtually no dialogue, relying mostly on the acting of the man who plays him to drive the story forward. It's like one of the better episodes of the Twilight Zone.

Big-budget visual effects (which were professionally created for the filmmakers free of charge by the effects wizards behind Star Trek) and an emotional, orchestral musical score highlight this human drama about a clone who finds his soul.