(Film Review) Code 8

Time to read: 2 min read

Movie Cover Movie Poster

If life hits you hard enough, you’ll start hitting back.

Review

This movie started out as a concept short-film in 2016; the premise is that a small percentage of humans are born with superpowers. While superpowers were welcomed and cherished at the beginning for their abilities, due to increased automation and adoption of machinery, superpowered individuals have fallen out of favour in society. Superhumans are now discriminated against and are actively persecuted by authorities.

TIP

Code 8 is police radio code for requesting cover/backup.

I liked how the movie was crowdfunded, and I was genuinely impressed by the quality of the film given the (relatively) limited budget. The cast was top-tier, including names such as Stephen Amell (from Arrow), Sung Kang (from Fast & Furious), and Robbie Amell (who had infamous for having the worst football throw in movie history). The effects were very professional and the movie was also filmed in Toronto, so it was pretty cool to recognize some of the landmarks.

One of the things I liked the most about the movie is how many of the thematic topics are so close to home. For instance, automation displacing jobs is a very real issue in our world and is something I've been thinking a lot about, and the film depicts a very plausible scenario when not enough has been done to transfer society to a more automated world (poverty, low standard of living, financial and health insecurity, etc.). The film also touches on topics such as discrimination, inequality, and addiction. While the film is not a social commentary, per se, but I felt that the social analysis was very superficial and that it could have delved more into one of the topics to fully flush it out.

Conclusion

Overall this was a very enjoyable film to watch and it constituted a new take on the superhumans genre.

Overall rating: 8.1

What does the rating mean?