OPENS JULY 2, CERT 15, 103 MINS Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos play Paul and Jessie Duncan, a professional urban couple with a seven-year-old son, Adam. When Adam dies in a car accident, kindly geneticist Dr Richard Wells (Robert De Niro) offers to retrieve Adam's cells, clone him and return an identical foetus to Jessie's womb. The only catch is, they'll have to raise Adam in Dr Wells' private rural community. Cut to seven years later and everything is going swimmingly until Adam Mk II outlives the original, whereupon he becomes a very troubled kid?thousand yard stares, homicidal behaviour. Is Adam remembering his former life/death, or is something more sinister going on? Is Dr Wells all he seems? The answer is, of course, "no", and what starts as a well-played psychological thriller/rumination on scientific ethics descends into the usual mix of jump-cuts, pyrotechnics and logic-defying plot twists. Good, unnerving fun for the first hour, though.
OPENS JULY 2, CERT 15, 103 MINS
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos play Paul and Jessie Duncan, a professional urban couple with a seven-year-old son, Adam. When Adam dies in a car accident, kindly geneticist Dr Richard Wells (Robert De Niro) offers to retrieve Adam’s cells, clone him and return an identical foetus to Jessie’s womb. The only catch is, they’ll have to raise Adam in Dr Wells’ private rural community.
Cut to seven years later and everything is going swimmingly until Adam Mk II outlives the original, whereupon he becomes a very troubled kid?thousand yard stares, homicidal behaviour. Is Adam remembering his former life/death, or is something more sinister going on? Is Dr Wells all he seems? The answer is, of course, “no”, and what starts as a well-played psychological thriller/rumination on scientific ethics descends into the usual mix of jump-cuts, pyrotechnics and logic-defying plot twists. Good, unnerving fun for the first hour, though.
