James (Tim DeZarna) is a tough old bird whose life choices have not served him well, but the cynicism this has engendered has not destroyed his moral compass. Not entirely, anyway. That is fortunate because his latest choice has put the fate of humanity in his hands. In PROJECT DOROTHY, James and his partner in a robbery gone bad, Blake (Adam Budron), are running from the law and relieved to find a hiding place in an abandoned installation that even the police aren’t authorized to enter. The relief is short-lived, and not just because James has taken a bullet to the leg. The cavernous space in which these two find themselves is empty, but not uninhabited. And the inhabitant has an agenda. That would be Dorothy, and as the film unfolds, they, and we, discover just how this AI came to be, why the people responsible for that creation decided that it needed to be destroyed, and the fallout from that decision.
Director/co-writer George Henry Horton does not take the obvious approach. This is a film that is slow simmer, designed to prey on the viewers’ unease about the creeping control technology is taking on our world. It’s also a moving character study of two outcasts who have formed their own ersatz father-son bond that never devolves into cheap sentiment. They are flawed, but they are also anything but unredeemable, sniping at one another over who botched the robbery, keeping a secret or two, and James discovering Blake’s unfortunate ignorance of movie sirens of bygone eras. Thanks to assured performances by DeZarna and Budron, there are moments of deep humanity, but they are also touches that keep the story rooted firmly, even humorously, in reality even if the premise resides in the universe of speculative fiction.
Dorothy has her own flaws, aside from wanting to take over the world, but they are as subtle as they will prove significant as she longs to break free of the installation built before she had access to the internet’s precursor. Eavesdropping on James and Blake after they innocently flip on the power, she begins to lust (there is no other word) for world domination, and with the McGuffin the pair have brought with them, she can do just that. She may not have a corporeal form, but let’s just say that forklifts have never been more forbidding.
OPERATION DOROTHY makes this battle of wits between two types of intelligences thoroughly engrossing as the humans are forced to outthink the computer in a vast structure that is alien to them, ominously eerie in its emptiness, and anything but secure from Dorothy’s sensors. Or taunting voice. Horton makes the most of those spaces in heightening the tension, and the vulnerability of the humans in peril. It’s a tidy and well-executed metaphor that works on several levels.
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