An average movie

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but I thought it could be a nice watch for me and my step-son. Honestly, within the first 5 minutes, it was obvious that the whole thing had a lot of potential. Indeed, you could feel some pretty dark stuff underneath the surface, like how you create leadership or the psychological turmoil of a young genius who has to become a military strategist. It was some pretty great stuff but, unfortunately, it became also obvious pretty quickly that the makers had no intention to go to deep into those issues in order to reach the widest audience possible. As a result, there is a constant shifting in the tone between some compelling scenes lost in the middle of some familly friendly affair. Furthermore, while Viola Davis was perfectly cast, I thought that Harrison Ford was rather distracting and I kept wondering what the hell he was doing here. A part from that, it was visually quite compelling and I enjoyed the mind game and the war game at the end. The zero gravity game was not really my thing, it was just some futuristic paintball and I thought it was rather underwhelming. To conclude, it could have been great but they watered down the content so it could never really fulfill its potential. I still think it is worth a look though, especially if you like the genre.

6/10