I, killer robot

The film: I, Robot, made in 2004, supposedly an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic I, Robot anthology of short stories.
What happened: Detective Spooner (Will Smith) has a strong distrust of robots, so when renowned robot scientist Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) turns up dead in the lobby of U. S. Robotics, the lawman immediately suspects a robot is the killer. Everyone else considers Spooner irrational in his dislike of robots, because the Three Laws of Robotics form "a perfect circle of protection" against robots killing or harming their human masters. But Spooner stays on the case and discovers that the newest robots have the ability to temporarily disregard the Three Laws. With the help of Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Spooner destroys the misguided VIKI robot and discovers the mitigating circumstances behind the Sonny robot's murder of Lanning.
What bothers me about this film: Before we can proceedd any further with this, it is necessary to review the Three Laws of Robotics, which, in the stories of Isaac Asimov, all robots must follow:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The First Law is meant to calm fears that a robot would decide to kill a human for the pure hell of it. But the inaction clause is troublesome, as this film shows, though well-intentioned, as it is meant to insure that a robot will actually do something if it sees a human in danger. The Second Law insures the subservience of robots to humans. And the Third Law insures that the robot will be around to take orders from humans in most cases.
Most of Asimov's stories derive their tension from the robots' black-and-white application of these rules to an essentially gray world. So it feels like a huge cheat in this film to have robots that can disregard the Three Laws even though the justification ultimately turns out to come from the Three Laws (namely, from VIKI's misunderstanding of the inaction clause of the First Law).
From the very first trailers I feared that this 'adaptation' would be completely unfaithful to the spirit of Asimov's stories. On the one hand I understand the need to make one feature-length film as opposed to a miniseries of episodes taking one short story at a time. But on the other hand, I find it insulting to Asimov's memory that none of his stories, nor the screenplay he actually co-wrote a long time ago, were considered worthy of putting on the big screen.
Something that doesn't quite make sense: I can't recall if this phrase occurred at all in the book, but in the film the three Laws of Robotics are referred to as a "perfect circle of protection." To me, that phrase makes sense only as a marketing slogan, yet in the film it is uttered by both Lanning and Spooner. The way I understand the three laws, a column would be a much more appropriate metaphor than a circle. The First Law is the base without which the Second Law could not stand, and the Second Law is in turn a base for the Third Law. The circle metaphor implies that the First Law is as dependent on the Third Law as the Third Law is on the Second Law, and perhaps also that the dependencies apply in both directions with equal force.
To further examine the circle metaphor, and test the idea that the dependencies apply in both directions, let's go the opposite of the usual order and start with the Third Law. The point of the Third Law is the self-preservation of a robot. A robot will not deliberately step on an exposed land mine just for the fun of it. However, a human could order the robot to step on the land mine and the robot would have to do it; thus, the Second Law can be seen as a check or balance on the Third Law. A human could order a robot to hurt other humans, but the robot would have to refuse to obey that order; thus, the First Law is definitely a check or balance on the Second Law. So, how is the Third Law a check or balance on the First Law? The only thing I can think of is that the Third Law ensures that the robot exists so that it may obey the First Law. But since the robot's self-preservation may be overridden by danger to humans or even humans' orders, there is no guarantee that the robot will always be around. Let's say that the only robot in a large area sacrifices himself to save humans from a fire. But then some wild animals show up to menace the humans. The robot is no longer around to protect the humans from the wild animals. Therefore, the Three Laws hardly make a perfect circle.
Tacky product placement: Detective Spooner (Will Smith) laces up vintage 2004 Converse shoes. It makes sense for Spooner to prefer old-fashioned (e.g., early 2000s) music playback devices over the newer voice-activated players, but the Converse shoes serve practically no purpose in the story. Do trendier shoes in the movie's time frame incorporate robotic components? I even looked in the deleted scenes and couldn't find any such story justification.