Who’s In It: Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle
The Basics: People with supernatural powers and wacky names—“watchers” see the future, “movers” can turn on the firehoses at the prom, “stitchers” can heal you and on and on, all the way to “sniffers”—are on the run from some bad guys who want to catch them and harness their abilities to create an army of freakazoid human biological weapons. At least I think that’s what’s going on here. Not that it matters too much. Everybody runs around and fights and jumps and yells and then they do it all over again. Like if they made
Heroes into a movie and decided that nothing mattered but the kicking and screaming parts.
What's The Deal: Ultimately, this is kind of a Sprite commercial. It looks rad, all neon-Hong-Kong-in-the-rain stylized and shiny and full of punchy energy and you get to hear Dakota Fanning swear for maybe the first time. But it's empty. Lots of popcorn movies are, so that's no surprise. It'd just be nicer if all the flashy visual stuff made you actually feel something like giddy surprise or suspense or even the desire to go get some candy from the concession. But it doesn't.
Why It's Set In Hong Kong:
1. Awesome signs that aren't in boring English.
2. Chaos is built into the architecture.
3. Why not?
4. Nicolas Cage already ruined Bangkok.
Good News For Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou and Camilla Belle: It's better than that last
Fantastic Four movie or
Hounddog or
Never Back Down or
10,000 B.C.. I know, big accomplishment. But it's something, right? Failing being laugh-out-loud awful and becoming a weird sort of must-see experience, that's the best you can hope for.