The two young stars, Canadian beauty Marie Avgeropoulos and Taylor Lautner, are both considerably better than the material.
Which is a back-handed compliment since the material is pretty terrible.
What you have here is a targeted-to-young-audience "street drama" with pretensions of being an action thriller because of the backdrop of Free-Jumping. In fact the closest antecedents would be the "crime dramas" of the 1940s. Sort of.
That is a lot of ambition here and very little in the way of delivery.
There are problems galore. The script is all over the place. Sometimes it thinks it is a rom-com. Sometimes it thinks it is a Van Damme knockoff. And sometimes it thinks it is West Side Story.
The free-jumping scenes are over-directed. What that means is that while the film tries to maintain a "street cred" sort of realism, the action scenes are so well choreographed you might think you were watching a music video. This creates dissonance, which does not help the viewer experience.
And the action climax, the last 10 minutes which is where most films get to shine, is actually weaker than the first 10 minutes, where the romance starts. Which is hardly a great recommendation.
Bottom line: the two stars deserve better. Much better.
Which is a back-handed compliment since the material is pretty terrible.
What you have here is a targeted-to-young-audience "street drama" with pretensions of being an action thriller because of the backdrop of Free-Jumping. In fact the closest antecedents would be the "crime dramas" of the 1940s. Sort of.
That is a lot of ambition here and very little in the way of delivery.
There are problems galore. The script is all over the place. Sometimes it thinks it is a rom-com. Sometimes it thinks it is a Van Damme knockoff. And sometimes it thinks it is West Side Story.
The free-jumping scenes are over-directed. What that means is that while the film tries to maintain a "street cred" sort of realism, the action scenes are so well choreographed you might think you were watching a music video. This creates dissonance, which does not help the viewer experience.
And the action climax, the last 10 minutes which is where most films get to shine, is actually weaker than the first 10 minutes, where the romance starts. Which is hardly a great recommendation.
Bottom line: the two stars deserve better. Much better.