Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
When gigantic robots attack New York City, "Sky Captain" uses his private air force to fight them off. His ex-girlfriend, reporter Polly Perkins, has been investigating the recent disappearance of prominent scientists. Suspecting a link between the global robot attacks and missing men, Sky Captain and Polly decide to work together. They fly to the Himalayas in pursuit of the mysterious Dr. Totenkopf, the mastermind behind the robots.
Sky Captain is a visually audacious experiment — shot almost entirely against digital backdrops, it recreates a Golden Age serial aesthetic with remarkable fidelity and genuine cinematic imagination, earning top marks for cinematography and novelty. The retro-futurist dieselpunk world is singular and unmistakable. However, the plot is thin pulp adventure that never transcends its serial inspirations, the leads (Law and Paltrow) feel oddly flat and lack chemistry, and the ending — culminating in a somewhat anticlimactic reveal of the villain — dissipates rather than pays off the world-building. A fascinating technical achievement that outstrips its screenplay.