The Human race is at the beginning of the end. The Robot race is at point of beginning.
2044. The climate change and a series of solar storms have turned in a desert the surface of the planet and annihilated to the 99.7 % of Earth's population, leaving alive 21 million people across the world in a single city covered by mechanical clouds (zeppelins anchored to the city) to make rain. Trying to rebuild the world again, a robot company named ROC Corporation create Automata Pilgrim 7000 with two security protocols: 1st, a robot cannot harm human beings, and 2nd, a robot cannot alter himself or another robot. But this situation changes when police officer Sean Wallace shoots and destroys a robot claiming that it was altering himself. With the company worried by the possible implications if the case were known by the people, insurance agent Jacq Vaucan is chosen to investigate the happened, while Vaucan tries to convince his boss, friend and brother-in-law Robert Bold to transfer him and his pregnant wife Rachel to the coast, with Bold accepting the request if Vaucan solves the case. Going with Wallace to a brothel, they meets a robot in blue wig named Cleo, who is shot by Wallace in the belief that Cleo will go with the mysterious repairman that Vaucan calls The Clocksmith. However, Cleo travels a mechanical workshop property of Dr. Susan Dupré, who informs Vaucan about a terrible possibility: that the robots can alter their second protocol themselves to acquire self awareness, implying a non-human intelligence that easily it should overpass the human brain after a test where she mixed a biocore from the Wallace's shot robot with Cleo's own biocore. Vaucan reports secretly Bold about it, but ROC's chairman intercepts the message. When Dr. Dupré is killed in front of Vaucan by a ROC's squad group, he and Cleo run from the assassins, ending outside the city, lost in the white desert that surrounds the city. Forced to meet ROC's chairman, this reports Bold about the secret of the two protocols: that the Pilgrim 7000's prototype was created without them, and due to its unlimited intelligence and learning, he overcame to its human owners just eight days later. After to escape, all the next Pilgrims were created with the protocols to limit their capacity in order to have them under control. Fearing the extinction of human race if all the Pilgrims evolve beyond the protocols, ROC's chairman blames Vaucan of Dupré's assassination and the alteration of the robots to cover up to the public, and Wallace is hired to find Cleo and Vucan and kill them. According Vaucan, Cleo and three robots more travel across the desert to the forbidden and radioactive zone to meet The Clocksmith, Vaucan will find himself as witness of something that it would change the world as nobody could imagine.—Chockys
About 20 years before the story takes place (In 2044 AD), solar flares irradiate the Earth, killing over 99% of the world's population (population left is 21 Million) and turning the Earth into a radioactive desert. The survivors gather in a network of safe cities and build primitive humanoid robots, called Pilgrims, to help rebuild and operate in the harsh environment. These robots have two unchangeable protocols: they cannot harm any form of life and may not repair, modify, or alter themselves or other robots in any way. Initially seen as mankind's salvation, they are relegated to manual labor when they fail to stop the advance of desertification. Society has regressed due to lack of technology besides the Pilgrims, as a lack of functional aircraft or other transport prevents travel and cars are a rare commodity, and humanity is on the brink of extinction.
In 2044, Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas)-an insurance investigator for ROC, the company that manufactures Pilgrims-investigates a report from Wallace (Dylan McDermott), a police officer who shot a robot he claims was modifying itself. It was a sophisticated alteration and had used parts from other robots. The parts came from robots that were currently in service on a section of the outer city wall. As Jacq looks for a robot they suspect was stealing parts, it leads him outside the city. When he finds it inside a shipping container, it sets itself on fire. As he and a team open up the burned robot to see what it was hiding, they discover the robot had a rare nuclear battery that could power a robot indefinitely. They are able to power up the robot once more, but when he asks it why it set itself on fire, it burns out again.
Jacq salvages the remains and speculates to his boss, Robert (Robert Forster), that there may be a "clock-smith", someone who illegally modifies robots, who is overriding the second protocol. Incredulous, Robert rejects this possibility but offers Jacq a transfer out of the city if he can find evidence. Jacq's pregnant wife Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) initially rejects his plans but she eventually relents.
Jacq and Wallace investigate a brothel, where they find Cleo (Melanie Griffith), a modified robot that Wallace subsequently shoots in the leg. When Jacq objects, Wallace says that Cleo's owner will lead them to the clock-smith; Wallace also threatens to kill Jacq if he does not split the proceeds of the battery on the black market. Jacq follows Cleo's owner to a clock-smith named Dr. Dupré (Melanie Griffith), who claims not to know who altered Cleo, an action that would destroy Cleo's CPU. Dupre says that the only reason for the 2nd protocol was to stop the evolution of robots, who could become far more advanced than the humans in a very short period of time, due to their unlimited computational resources. If the robots start repairing themselves, ROC will be out of business very soon.Jacq leaves the burned robot's CPU with her and offers to give her the battery if she can locate information on the clock-smith. When Dupré installs the modified CPU in Cleo, Cleo begins self-repairing. Dupré contacts Jacq, who alerts Robert; however, ROC intercepts Jacq's message (without him knowing about it) and sends a team of assassins (Dominic Hawk (David Ryall) is the owner of ROC insurance) to Dupré's lab.
Dupré is killed, but Jacq escapes in a car driven by Cleo. When Cleo takes them into a maze of stanchions, both cars crash; the assassins are killed, and Jacq is injured. Cleo takes Jacq with her into the desert, where they are joined by three other robots, none of whom will obey Jacq's orders. However, the first protocol forces them to prevent his death. Desperate to return to the city to be with his pregnant wife, Jacq makes contact with Robert, who sends Wallace to recover him. Wallace threatens Jacq's life and destroys two of the robots, who have objected to his actions; Jacq kills Wallace with a flare gun before he can also destroy Cleo. Wallace's partner flees after taking a battery from one of the robots.The partner goes back to ROC and reports to Hawk and Vernon that the machines he encountered were alive.
Robert's boss (Hawk) discloses that the predecessor to the first Pilgrim was a quantum mind created with no security protocols and no artificial restraints on its computational power. By the 9th day the unit had evolved to an extent that the ROC team was not able to understand it. They realized that they had to limit the intelligence of the artificial machines.Before they deactivated it, its makers tasked it with designing the security protocols that govern Pilgrims. Robert's boss informs Robert that no one has been able to break Pilgrim security protocols because they were created by the unrestricted quantum mind and ROC purposefully limited the computational power of all subsequent AI. ROC forces Robert to accompany a team sent to kill Jacq and the unknown clock-smith before the robots can evolve further beyond human understanding. When Robert objects to their kidnapping Jacq's wife and baby daughter, Vernon Conway (Tim McInnerny), the leader, shoots him and leaves him for dead.Meanwhile, Jacq meets the robot responsible for modifying the others. The robot says that he and the other robots plan to go to the radioactive area where humans cannot go. Initially skeptical, Jacq eventually accepts that the robot naturally evolved, like humanity. After a series of philosophical discussions, Jacq gives them his battery, which they use to complete a new design, a sort of dog/insect robot. The robots repair a vehicle for Jacq, and he leaves for the city.
When Conway reaches the robot outpost, he destroys two of the four robots. Jacq finds the dying Robert and returns to the outpost as Conway wounds Cleo and kills the evolved robot. Jacq kills all ROC assassins but Conway, though he is further wounded in the battle. As Conway prepares to kill Jacq, the new robot saves his life by pushing Conway off a cliff. Jacq overcomes his distrust of the uninhibited robot when reunited with his family, and he leaves for the coast with them, as Cleo and the new robot venture further into the irradiated desert, where no humans can follow them. Arriving at the coast they see the ocean, and discover that the Earth is recovering and that hope remains for human beings.
