GODSEND

With Robert DeNiro, Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Directed by Hamm

The Duncans lose their 8-year old son (the aptly named) Adam in a freak road accident. They're devastated. Hope comes in the shape of the wife's old lecturer, Dr. Wells, a brilliant medical researcher who suggests cloning, a second chance to have their identical son back again. It is illegal, but they eventually look past the moral dilemmas and agree. Everything is great until after (the new) Adam's 8th birthday. He has horrible nightmares and suffers from terrifying flashbacks of a life he never lived. With the parents at a loss, things escalate, becoming deadly, the sweet affable boy becoming the opposite. While it all starts out interestingly enough, the narrative seems to lose steam midway. With the topical subject matter that can keep you in a debate for much longer than the film's running time, it eventually boils down to a basic thriller with some cheap scares that at least sees DeNiro getting a little closer to what he's good at - not lame comedy.
The title's syllables can obviously also be adjusted to infer the more obvious 'God Send' of a child returning to its parents and 'God's End' when it comes to dabbling in matters some believe to be in the hands of the higher power.

3 / C
- PB

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