A.X.L. Review

A.X.L. has a little bit of heart mixed with a lot of commercial vibes. The whole thing feels like a big dirt bike commercial. At least 80% of the movie is Miles doing stunts and tricks on his dirt bike, so if you didn’t want a dirt bike before, you might after.

The problem is it spends all that time showing Miles is a bike guy instead of showing what the dog can do, which is what the trailers sold. For an advanced military robot, A.X.L. gets injured really easily and really quickly. It can’t even catch one kid on a dirt bike, let alone do anything military. It spends most of the movie getting hurt and needing Miles to rescue or repair it. In one scene someone points a flamethrower at it, and it just sits there. It felt like version 1.0, a glorified regular dog with a few robot features, not a machine that could handle itself on a battlefield.

There’s not much story beyond what’s in the trailer. If you’ve watched the trailer, you basically have the whole movie: it covers about 90% of the trailer and 10% of anything new. The ending felt cheap, too, because you can see where it’s headed.

To be fair, you’ll feel good while you’re in the theater, and it’s not a total waste of time. But once I left, I couldn’t remember much of it until I saw the trailer again. The best thing it has going for it is the short runtime, under an hour and a half. It didn’t waste too much time, even though time was wasted.

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A.X.L. (2018) Cast and Details

A.X.L. (2018) is directed by Oliver Daly and stars Alex Neustaedter, Becky G, Alex MacNicoll, Dominic Rains and Thomas Jane. It runs 98 minutes and is rated PG. You can look up the full cast and crew on IMDb. You might also like my The Happytime Murders review.