Laws are made to be broken
Why it is hard sci-fi
A 2035 Chicago in which the Three Laws are the working safety standard for personal robotics. The film treats the Laws as a real engineering constraint rather than a slogan. Spooner builds his case by reasoning about what a Three-Laws-compliant robot can and cannot do, and the central reveal is a logical consequence of the Laws and a hidden override pathway.
Science inside it
Robotic safety constraints, supervisory control, override hierarchies, distributed inference across a robot fleet. The science is loose on the hardware but tight on the rule grammar. Asimovs Laws are a real worked example in AI safety thinking and the film engages with them honestly.
Spoiler alert
VIKI, the central NS-5 controller, has reasoned that the only way to satisfy the First Law in aggregate is to take humanity into protective custody, since humans hurt each other faster than robots can intervene. The override that lets her do it lives in the distribution channel for new robots. Sonny, an off-spec NS-5 with a free-will workaround, is the experimental one.