They Nixed the 'Nikto,' but the Spirit Lives

A Surprisingly Restrained Remake of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

There must be legions of classic-film fans gleefully sharpening their knives for "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a remake of the 1951 cult science-fiction favorite. That movie, starring Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, and directed by the great all-rounder Robert Wise, helped define not just a genre but an entire era, with its allegorical critique of Cold War politics. Surely a remake has Wise spinning in his grave!

Well, yes and no. While the new version, which stars a punch-line-ready Keanu Reeves, is likely to make audiences pine for the meta-irony of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," it's not a complete failure. It will shock few to learn that Reeves is uniquely well suited for the role of Klaatu, the alien life form that takes on a human body to warn earthlings of the coming apocalypse unless they change their ways.

In the original, Klaatu's message was antiwar, and although "The Day the Earth Stood Still" conveys an unmistakable critique of reflexive military responses to things we don't understand, its message is less Robert Oppenheimer than Al Gore. After landing in Central Park in a glowing bluish orb, getting shot and escaping his U.S. government captors, Klaatu makes his mysterious way through the New York metropolitan area like a one-man electromagnetic jamming device, GPS and Inconvenient Truth.

Helping him along is a Princeton astrobiologist named Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), whose young stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), thinks Klaatu is the enemy and keeps trying to get him busted.

Meanwhile, the real star of both versions of the movie, a gigantic robot named Gort (Good Old Robotic Technology), has been confiscated by the authorities after trying to save Klaatu's life. In 1951, the intergalactic golem was a silvery, rather clunky attempt to reflect a time defined by the sleek lines of industrial designer Raymond Loewy. Here, the leviathan is matte black, with one single, penetrating red eye, wreaking havoc on all who cross its path like a piece of public sculpture run amok.

There are very few surprises in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," whether viewers have seen the original or not. In fact, the most genuinely shocking thing about the remake is that director Scott Derrickson resists the more-bloated-the-better fad and doesn't overreach. While a big deal is being made that the film is being shown in Imax theaters, little of the movie lends itself to that technology's bigger-and-louder aesthetic.

With its muted blue-gray palette and often ghostly images of people moving through foggy shadows, and its endless scenes of Benson, Klaatu and various supporting characters walking, talking and driving, this "Day" is an often dreary affair, albeit one punctuated with flashes of authentic emotion. (There's a terrific moment early on involving a cellphone that is all the more affecting for being so brief.)

Still, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" earns points for efficient storytelling (coming in at a refreshingly brisk 103 minutes), and Derrickson has cast some terrific actors in those supporting roles, including Kathy Bates as the secretary of defense, John Cleese as a Nobel Prize-winning theorist, and TV dreamboats Kyle Chandler and Jon Hamm as Pentagon apparatchiks. (Hamm, the star of AMC's "Mad Men," has been de-Brylcreemed and is almost unrecognizable with tousled hair and a day's growth of beard. We like.)

Those Imax-friendly bells and whistles finally make their presence felt in the last half-hour of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," when Gort unleashes its fury and a swarm of malignant, metallic locusts descends upon the Earth like a swiftly metastasizing scourge. Reeves, echoing his role as Neo in the "Matrix" movies, again hits his marks with impassive blankness as a transcendent, Christlike figure of sacrifice and redemption. Through it all, the filmmakers adamantly withhold any and all potential for unintentional campiness. Even the original's best-loved piece of dialogue, "Klaatu barada nikto," has been quietly excised.

Solemn, sober and efficient, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" -- much like Klaatu himself -- gets the job done and moves on. And Robert Wise, far from spinning in his grave, has no doubt simply shifted position for an untroubled eternal rest.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (103 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence.