Synopsis

Four men pursue highly specialized callings: a wild-animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a naked mole-rat expert, and a robotics scientist. Their seemingly unrelated stories gradually connect through shared obsessions with control, creation, nature, and the future. Interviews, archival footage, cartoons, and experimental imagery combine into a playful yet haunting meditation on human ambition and the boundaries between civilization and the wild.

Factoids & Trivia

• The title comes from Rodney Brooks' 1989 paper, "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System." Brooks proposed using many small, expendable robots rather than relying on one large, highly reliable machine.

• The film uses the Interrotron, an interview system that lets subjects look toward the interviewer while appearing to look directly into the camera. The technique became closely associated with the filmmaker's documentary style.

• Its visual design combines 35mm, 16mm, Super-8, video, black-and-white footage, archival material, old movie serials, and cartoons.

• The atmospheric sequence in which George Mendonca shapes a topiary elephant in the rain was staged with fog machines, water towers, cranes, powerful lights, and a large production crew rather than captured as a simple observational moment.

• The film was released in 1997 by Sony Pictures Classics and earned strong critical recognition as an unusually experimental documentary.