BEFORE: I don't know much about this film, it's the kind of film you think "Eh, it might be interesting" so you put it on your "someday/maybe" list, and then three or four years go by and you figure you're never going to get around to it, because it's really hard to link to, but you know, that's OK because again, you don't know much about it and it's not exactly talked about a lot, so who the hell even knows if it's any good? But then it becomes exactly the film you need to link a couple blockbusters together somewhere on the road between Easter and Mother's Day. The fact that I can see this as some kind of connective tissue between "Jurassic World: Rebirth" and "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere"? Well, that's kind of enough to move it from the bottom of the list to the top, right?
Lucy Thackeray carries over from "Jurassic Park: Rebirth".
THE PLOT: After being shot, Tom awakens from a coma with fragments of his smartphone embedded in his head - and worse, that returning to normal teenage life is impossible because he has developed a strange set of superpowers.
AFTER: This is a fairly basic revenge-driven action film, I'm reminded of all of those Jason Statham movies where he has to work his way up the chain of a multi-layered criminal organization, like "The Beekeeper" or "A Working Man" or a number of others. And Tom has an advantage here, he can use his new smart-phone based mental powers to confuse, distract and terrorize the low-level gangsters in order to figure out the identity of their boss, and then go work on THAT guy.
For example, Tom takes a video (with his eyes?) of himself urinating on a gang member's car, and then when the gang leaves their hideout to beat him up, he's already invaded their space, stealing their stash of drugs. He then hides the drugs in the dealers' bedrooms or closets and sends an e-mail (with his brain?) to the police department with all the addresses, as a hot tip. This one action takes half the gang members off the streets, but the ones left behind are more dangerous, and now THEY'RE out for revenge, too.
Tom seems to have forgotten a very basic problem - he's not exactly Jason Statham, he's just a teenager. But hey, Jason Statham couldn't hack another person's cell phone with his mind, so you know, maybe it's a trade-off. The gang raped the female classmate that Tom liked, because her brother would not join the gang, and they recorded the incident. Tom knows exactly who did it because once he sees the footage, he can replay it over and over in his mind, and look for more clues like what kind of shoes the gang-bangers were wearing, or what tattoos are visible in the footage.
Meanwhile, he spends more time with Lucy as she recovers, and there's a chance for a real relationship here if he can take down the gang and not be sloppy about it, which would mean they could figure out who's stealing their drugs and burning up their money. No, wait, reverse that. As long as the gang's leader doesn't kidnap Tom's grandmother AND Lucy and force him to transfer money directly into his bank account, things will be fine. Well, guess what?
I'm going to keep things short tonight because I worked late today (Sunday) and I have to be back at the theater first thing in the morning (Monday) so if I'm lucky and stop now, I can get maybe five hours of sleep. So no Monday movie this week, I'll try my best to be back here with. a Tuesday movie.
Directed by Adam Randall
Also starring Bill Milner (last heard in "Locke"), Maisie Williams (last seen in "Then Came You"), Miranda Richardson (last seen in "Enchanted April"), Rory Kinnear (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Jordan Bolger (last seen in "The Woman King"), Charley Palmer Rothwell (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Armin Karima, McKell David, Shaquille Ali-Yebuah, Aymen Hamdouchi (last seen in "6 Days"), Leon Annor, Petrice Jones, Cameron Jack (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Paul Reynolds, Christopher Colquhoun, Oliver Coopersmith, Helen Daniels.
RATING: 5 out of 10 riot cops
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