Artificial review: Andrew Garfield enters his villain era

When much of the world looks at Andrew Garfield, they see a hero.

Not only has the charismatic English actor played Spider-Man, but he's also been the noble protagonist of The Uprising , Under the Banner of Heaven, Silence, and tick, tick…Boom! Yet when Italian film director Luca Guadagnino looks at Garfield, he sees that the actor's potential as a villain lies in his charms.

Last year, with After the Hunt , Guadagnino employed Garfield's sex appeal to set up a flirty academic who is then accused of sexual assault.

The audience's presumed appreciation for Garfield scratches us in this role, as we're asked to consider if such a beguiling man could be a rapist.

Now, with Artificial , Guadagnino weaponizes Garfield's charms more extensively.

Together, they portray OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman as a cult leader, and by extension the artificial intelligence industry as a cult desperate for all of us to, if not join, then at least submit.

SEE ALSO: 'The AI Doc' director says ‘F*ck you’ to AI companies stealing artists’ IP Artificial centers on the rise of OpenAI, but not Sam Altman.

The controversial AI exec is a sly antagonist in Artificial.

The film itself follows Ilya Sutskever ( Anora 's Yura Borisov), a Soviet-born computer scientist who was making waves with his research in Canada when Altman came knocking.

In Ilya, Artificial presents an idealist who is drawn in by Sam's argument that OpenAI is not a company built to prioritize profits over the well-being of mankind.

Together, they dream of changing the world.

But Ilya, who never lies, is confounded by the double-talk Sam performs, making false promises and schemes as easily as breathing.

Artificial is the story of Ilya's disillusionment, as he battles Sam for the future of AI — and mankind.

SEE ALSO: Review: 'The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist' is a panic attack, in a good way Elon Musk is a clown in Artificial .