Taking lives Fantastic youth thriller, growing closer to the final into a first-class spectacular action movie, turned out to be a spectacular and interesting film. The correct distribution of budget funds allowed the picture to be laid out, both on excellent special effects, and to stand out with talented casting, emotionally holding attention and causing empathy during viewing.
New work of the talented Caruso tells about the fate of a boy of alien origin, which in puberty manifests inhuman superpowers. There are only nine people like him, but three are dead. Taking lives, an evil race of other, much more creepy-looking aliens intends not only to complete the genocide of the protagonist’s home planet (destroying the above-mentioned nine one by one), but also to seize our planet, whose representatives do not have a rich arsenal of superpowers and are much more vulnerable.
A film that could slide into a boring teenage drama or a snotty love story of an outcast and a talented photographer girl regularly breaks out of the ordinary routine with spectacular scenes and a cool set of graphic elements. The film does not speculate on excessive drama, retaining some limits of relevance of modern youth problems, playing successfully on the topic of conflict with adults, experiences of strong first love and, of course, problems with school bullies. Despite a large set of skills, alien heroes do not lose human qualities, thereby causing empathy, then sympathy, then joy, and with interest tell a colorful and sometimes tense story with an abundance of fiction.
Alex Pettifer and Timothy Oliphant perfectly serve on the screen the types of teenager and adult, mentor and talented student, loyal friends and assistants, bravely resisting all the surrounding problems. Sweet Dianna Agron graces the film with her charm as the protagonist’s love interest. This brown-eyed blonde as a whole came out not only with decoration, but also managed to play her heroine, passionate about photography, telling about herself vividly and with interest, psychologically supporting the single protagonist, filling his life with light and happiness.
Well, Teresa Palmer here is something incredible! A beautiful blonde girl with blue eyes appears as a real killer machine, with honed survival skills and impeccable skills of using her own powers! It is she, of course, the main plus of this picture and her character came out incredibly cool and at the same time charming-cute! Her successful roles in the wonderful "Tales of the Night" and "Wolf's Pit" can not be compared with the amazing performance in this picture, but still her best work was "Abstinence". However, this is not so important, more important is how she manifested herself as a militant type, and she managed to do just fine!
If there's anything you can scold the film for, it's for secondary in various details. No, seriously, the hero with glowing palms used as a weapon (and not only) has a lot of associations with Tony Stark, alien children with superpowers, whose tracks the liquidator raves, were recently in a magnificent remake of “Witch Mountain”, a fighting girl performed by Palmer is not that more fantastic version of Johansson in the image of Black Widow, or that grew up Chloe Moretz from the best in the world of the comic book, mastered an even greater set of unreal possibilities. Well, the team of villains led by Kevin Duran and a copy of the evil drillers Eric Bana from “Star Trek” with a small admixture of Agents Smith.
This may not be all, but as an example, it already quite clearly characterizes the sensation of déjà vu as you watch it. Borrowing, in principle, not that went to the film in the negative, because the combination of these elements resulted in the plot is very organic, but pure action in the shootouts and high-quality executed graphic monsters at the end please much more than the plot and character details. It turned out well, interesting and spectacular, with a large set of impressive and cool scenes, the rest is not so important, the main thing is that the film will be able to thoroughly entertain!
Plus, there's a couple more flaws. The production hand of Michael Bay does not feel powerful enough, such a film should be directed by him, and the budget would increase from 60 million to at least 150, unfolding to the fullest with large-scale chases, explosions and shootouts. Caruso essentially squeezed everything he could out of the budget, and this is already admirable, but the film has such a rich potential that you regret watching a possible summer blockbuster and multimillion-dollar project make a simple fantastic action movie.
In addition, we are very clearly hinted throughout the plot that everything we saw is only the beginning. Only two of the remaining six, on whom tattooed villains worked, remain unsolved (and they clearly look like performers, not the main villains), and the main question that surfaces almost from the beginning, what is in the box – remained unanswered. But whether there will be a sequel and whether there will be answers to everything is another big question. Well, the most significant problem is still the final parting. There is no such thing as a finale! Having lost all the plot logic and all the sweetness of the happy ending, the ending sharply lubricates positive emotions.
Secondary images and not a large budget are not such weighty faults to negatively affect the project. D.J. Caruso’s fantastic film turned out wonderful, and really cool. Just in addition to admiring the abundance of the final action and pleasant contemplation of charming girls, at the end there is a small sediment that could be even better, and end much sweeter. Despite its shortcomings, the project succeeded. Entertainment cinema in its bright and very good manifestation, cool and high-quality fantastic film!
8 IZ 10
Original