This was a movie that was released on Fox Movies during their Saturday night premiere last week. It has an interesting premise that quite intrigue me and since it was not a major Hollywood movie that had theatrical release in Indonesia, it was certainly nice to be given opportunity to see it, even if it was on small screen. OK, I'll get on with it now.
Brief Story Line
In the world where people with extraordinary abilities (referred to as Powers), live among the normal people, their existence were hugely undermined especially after machines were used to replace their works. Becoming the marginalized people, they had to work odd and sometimes illegal jobs in order to survive. Connor Reed (Robbie Amell - Desperados, Nine Lives etc) was one of those who had power, specifically electric and had difficulty in finding real job to support his mother Mary (Kari Matchett - Covert Affairs TV series) who happened to be a cryokinetic and suffering from cancer.
With jobs hardly available, Connor was somehow enlisted by a crew of Powers criminals led by a Telekinetic named Garret (Stephen Amell - Arrow TV series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows etc) who was working for a drug lord named Sutcliffe (Greg Bryk - My Spy, Bitten TV series etc). However, things became complicated for Connor when he was suspected by detective Park (Sung Kang - Fast & Furious series etc) and his partner Davis (Aaron Abrams - Hannibal TV series etc).
With time running out for Connor as his mother's illness has progressed to advance stage, he had to perform the biggest heist while trying to evade from the police who was supported by robot drones called Guardians. And how would the story conclude? Find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this movie was about as much as I had anticipated. Since the start of the film, I already had the feeling that it would be a bit dark with moral ambiguity on the lead character, a young man who had been trying to do what was right in the world where everything seemed to go against him. The idea of making the people with super powers became just regular people who tried to fit in was unique and interesting, especially since we have been bombarded by soooo many superhero movies/series where they were mostly black or white.
Despite having a unique take of the powered people, the rest of the story though was pretty standard. There were the obvious bad guys and coupled with a pair of totally contradictory type of police plus the unlikely "hero" made everything rather predictable. However, the intention of the director/writer Jeff Chan to make this movie was something that I admired. With limited budget (after gaining the money to produce the movie through fundraising campaign), he still managed to make a decent movie. The special effects were actually not bad and the robot Guardians seemed lively.
In addition, the action was done quite seriously. It could be seen from some of the fights (I like the heist scenes best). Mostly they adequately serve their purpose. As I mentioned above, this movie was pretty dark and the tone was quite consistent. I thought there was no light moment at all and everything seemed to be going from good to bad and bad to worse for our main lead. The ending of this movie (which had a duration of around 100 minutes without any mid or post end credit scene) was OK. There was no surprise, although there might be hint of having either sequel (which would probably be unlikely seeing its box office performance) or a series.
Aside from Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell and Sung Kang, the support cast of Karie Matchett, Greg Bryk and Aaron Abrams were all familiar faces to me. They fit their roles quite well and I had no problem with their performance. Oh, as I watched this on cable TV, there were some censorship done on few scenes (likely showed brief nudity plus violence) and also the F word was censored which was understandable.
Overall this was an OK movie for me, with a unique take on the people with powers, pretty dark but personally a bit depressing. It was not the glamorous type of super hero movie, however it was a decent and admirable effort by the persons involved. The film was more like action drama rather than superhero action. If you are fans of Stephen Amell, you might be interested in seeing him in a different role. So you could give this a try if you are intrigued by the premise, just do not expect it to be your everyday superhero story.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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