Fear is the most dangerous power
2019-12-06
$15.0M
99 min
In Lincoln City, some inhabitants have extraordinary abilities. Most live below the poverty line, under the close surveillance of a heavily militarized police force. Connor, a construction worker with powers, involves with a criminal gang to help his ailing mother. (Based on the short film “Code 8,” 2016.)
I thought the trailer made Code 8 look like it was gonna be pretty bad, but I liked the premise, and I wanted to see what Stephen Amell could do in a 2019 feature film, so I gave it a chance, and while I don't think it was great, it was better than I had been expecting. There were some bits that sort of reminded me of last year's Darkest Minds, and that's definitely a bad thing, but overall it was actually pretty decent. It goes for both the social commentary, and a pew pew splodey zap zap action crime thriller. It doesn't work spectacularly as either, but it tries, and its failures certainly are not abysmal ones.
Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.
Code 8 never really grabbed me, though I managed to watch it all the way through. Perhaps I am an outlier viewer, but I would have liked to see more time spent on why society lowered the status of the super-powered people to practically second class citizens. To me that might have been more compelling viewing than the details of Connor’s descent into crime or his mother’s rather stereotypical declining health. But within its narrow plot and limited number of interesting characters, it may have been less than great, but it was better than mediocre.
Robbie Amell is undoubtedly a good-looking man, but that really does not forgive the fact that as an actor, he is really dead behind the eyes. The concept here is quite interesting - ordinary people have superpowers and are all still pretty much persecuted by the authorities. Amell is down on his luck and has a sick mother so, to pay for her extortionately expensive treatment, he seeks work casually - and soon falls in with the wrong company where he uses his powers (he can generate and focus electricity) to further their petty, but increasingly ambitious criminal activities. This gets him caught up between a drug-smuggling gang and with the pursuing police. Cousin Stephen discards his bow and arrow for this film, instead heading the druggie gang that will betray everyone/anyone as soon as look at them. The dialogue and pace of the film - there are some decent action scenes - keep it moving quite well, and the visual effects do their job - but the acting is just bland and the story an amalgam of B-grade X-men themes.
Code 8 is X-Men minus the budget and the A-list cast, and that's the good news. Unfortunately, the movie suffers more, not when it deviates from, but when it copies Marvel's mutants. Code 8 is set in a world where 4% of the population are born with various supernatural abilities, but instead of being rich and famous, they face discrimination, live in poverty, and often turn to crime.
As far as I can tell, Code 8 is an allegory about illegal immigrants in the US – the image of day laborers waiting for a van to take them to work is unmistakable, because we have seen it in other, better films (e.g., El Norte). There is also the matter of an addictive narcotic called Psyke manufactured from the cerebrospinal fluid of the People with Power (doesn't quite have the same ring as X-Men, does it?); a drug literally made by and for them.
Addressing that some immigrants are forced to smuggle and sell drugs while others turn to alcohol and other drugs to cope with depression and anxiety is one of the things that Code 8 does well. The problem is that the movie doesn't seem to understand that illegal immigrants do these things because they are powerless. If Mexicans entering the United States illegally had the kind of power that Code 8 characters have, Los Angeles would have been returned to Mexico a long time ago.
Connor and his similarly 'empowered' peers are oppressed because they want to be; what prison could contain them? I estimate that four “People with Powers” could reasonably demand that the President “kneel to Zod” within a week at most.
We know where illegal immigrants come from; of places where, to put it in the terms of the United States Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are nothing short of impossible (otherwise they'd stay put). Conversely, establishing the origin of the protagonists' powers in Code 8 is not as simple.
Like those of the X-Men, these powers are unexplained – and unexplainable –, and include the usual for a superhero (manipulation of electricity, superhuman strength), as well as, for lack of a better term, magic (telepathy, telekinesis) and finally, as Jules Winnfield would say, "miracles according to Hoyle" (healing the sick). Consider this: Sutcliffe's main lackey is bulletproof. Bulletproof! How does one even go about becoming bulletproof?
Code 8 is a very imaginative movie (my favorite part is the Guardians, robot cops that drop from drones), but it has absolutely zero curiosity about its own characters. Where do their powers come from? How do they work? And why don't they use them on a larger scale? These are all questions that Code 8 doesn't answer because it doesn't even bother to ask them.
