TL;DR – An example of a great concept and acting, not quite working due to the format.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
As a fan of Science Fiction, I really enjoy seeing new ideas brought to the
screen, even if they don’t always work out as well as they hoped. Today we get
to look and just such a film that is filled with heart and some really
interesting ideas, but maybe a film was not the right format to properly
express it. With that in mind let’s delve into a story about a boy and his gun.
So to set the scene, we open in on Elijah “Eli” Solinski (Myles
Truitt) who lives in Detroit with his adopted father Hal (Dennis Quaid). Eli
has been struggling at school, he is a good kid but he has anger management
issues (well if kids were making fun of your dead mother, I would not be shocked
if you threw a punch or two). One day as Eli was stripping out some wiring from
an abandoned factory we stumble across the site of a battle between two alien
forces. On the ground are a number of corpses and on box shape gun that Eli
drops when one of the bodies move. Back home Hal lets him know to set another
plate for dinner because Eli’s older brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor) just got out
of prison, but Eli needs to be careful around Jimmy. Which is not an
unreasonable statement because what they don’t know is that Jimmy is in debt to
Balik (James Franco) a local gangster to the tune of $60,000 for protection
while he was in jail and soon Jimmy brings that damage into the house.
