Rape is not an
issue anyone should take lightly. This movie uses it as the main angle for the
entire plot, and that didn’t sit well with me. While the idea of a revenge film
about a boy who gets shot in the head and turns into a kind of mutant is
intriguing, the execution falls flat. The film localizes his perspective—he
lives in the dark, gang-filled streets of London, and his actions reflect the
limited worldview of someone shaped by his surroundings. That’s an A+ for
concept, but a D for execution.
This movie is
painfully annoying and stupid. Our guy gets shot while trying to make a phone
call, and part of the phone gets stuck in his head. His brain fuses with the
phone’s CPU, turning him into a human-computer hybrid. And that’s putting it
mildly. As the movie progresses, he becomes so advanced that he can control
anything with electrical wiring. Then he takes it up another notch, gaining the
ability to manipulate electromagnetic waves. His entire view can become
digitized if he wants, and while that might sound cool, it’s just over-the-top
silly.
The movie is
based on a book of the same name by Kevin Brooks. Our hero, Tom (Bill Milner),
goes to school with Lucy (Maisie Williams), the girl of his dreams. He’s head
over heels for her, and one day she asks him to come over for tutoring. On his
way to her place, he sees some men leaving her apartment—apparently after
raping her. He picks up his phone to call the cops but gets shot in the head.
Pieces of the phone’s CPU fuse with his brain, giving him extraordinary
abilities. The rest of the movie focuses on his quest for revenge against the
men who hurt Lucy.
You might argue:
if Marvel and DC can make movies about weird incidents giving people
superpowers, why can’t anyone else? True, why not? Other films have explored
sci-fi concepts with humans gaining abilities beyond normal comprehension.
Think of the Unbreakable series
(Bruce Willis), Chronicle (2012), The Matrix trilogy, Sky High (2005),
or even John Wick (let’s
be honest, that guy isn’t normal). Whether you want to admit it or not, there
have been movies about humans with extraordinary abilities done far better than
this.
The acting in iBoy might have been decent, but the story was too simplistic, and the plot felt like another superhero movie that missed the mark.
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