First Hit: This film made very little sense and was confusing from the beginning.
Dakota Fanning is a wonderful upcoming actress and unfortunately she wasn’t able to make this movie very interesting.
What did take me slightly aback was seeing her in a short somewhat revealing skirt the entire film. This reminded me that she is starting to make a transition out of being a child actress. At the start of the film the audience must learn about people who have special powers.
There are “bleeders” people who scream so loud that they break blood vessels in others (why not themselves as well?), “movers” are people who can move and control things without touching them, “wipers” are people who can erase memories, and “shadows” who can hide people from being seen by “sniffers” and “watchers”.
This is where the confusion starts. In a few short minutes I have to remember the powers difference characters so that when they get introduced in the film I know what their special power is. Fanning plays Cassie Holmes, a watcher (people who predict the future) who is wandering around Hong Kong looking for a drug that was stolen from the US federal government that can help her mother.
Nowhere does this get explained well. She teams up with Nick Grant, a “mover” (played by Chris Evans) whose girlfriend, Kira (played by Camilla Belle) was someone the government experimented on with this drug and she lived. She also stole on syringe of this magical drug and now the government wants it back.
Sound confusing, well it gets worse so I won’t try to tell any more.
How all these young people ended up in living in Hong Kong was not explained and I kept wondering where they got their money to eat, sleep, and live. I’m not sure the director had much of a script to work with but the film seemed to move along quickly, then pause for a bit, and then move along again. So the effect was haphazard.
Overall: This was an aimless science fiction film which never seemed plausible. I’m sure the producers made it for teenagers and people in their early 20s. However, making sense of it would nearly be impossible for anyone of any age group.