First Hit: Beautifully constructed in every way, the story takes a second seat to the brilliant characters, their movement, and the detail which exudes the definition of quality.
This story has been told many times in many films; society and man does what he seems to do best, and that is destroy himself.
In 9, a government (with unnecessary references to a Nazi regime) is hell bent to create master machines to run everything because machines can do it better. Their belief is that we will end up having a better way of life.
But like the computer HAL, in 2001 – A Space Odyssey, machines seem to get to the point where they don’t trust or think they need humans, therefore they begin to destroy their creators. The chief inventor and designer of the Master Machine in 9 realizes this problem when his creation starts to destroy everyone therefore he wants to correct the problem.
To do this he creates small soft human like machines made of cloth on the outside and machine parts on the inside. But what makes these machines different is that he infuses each one with a part of his soul. Therefore each one of the 9 new character based machines embodies a particular strength and feature of its creator. They were named (labeled) with their number on the back and were numbered in the sequence in which they were built.
Each one was meant to work with the other in some way so that they would represent the creator as a whole. With his last soul transference, in which he dies, he finishes building 9.
The film begins with 9 waking up and searching his surroundings and when he looks out the window and sees another character, like him, dragging something down the road he heads out to make a connection. As he reaches the street, the expansive pictures show a destroyed world with no other living thing, except these characters whom we meet one by one, and a monster machine.
This initial monster machine is a cat like machine which hunts and chases after these little characters like they are mice. However, when we follow it back to a big imposing building we find it under the control of another machine, the Master Machine.
The cat machine finds a special disk like device, which was first found by 9, and mounts it into the Master Machine. This device brings the Master Machine to full life and it begins to create more machines which are hell bent on destroying any life other than itself.
The characters 1 – 9 realize they will all die if they don’t learn to work together using all their specialty skills and strengths to defeat the Master Machine once and for all.
The animation is outstanding in every sense of the term and craft. Shiny metallic items and soft cloth items are all given the same reverential craftsmanship in their representation. The voices provided by Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Fred Tatasciore, Elijah Wood, Alan Oppenheimer, Tom Kane, and Helen Wilson are outstanding.
Overall: This is a well crafted film and reminds me that age old stories can be told in interesting wonderful new ways.