Rent Kin (2018)

this is not a sci-fi movie - Kin review by CP Customer

I love this film. I have read a lot of reviews of this film mainly because they were poor or average and wondered if they were speaking about another movie. It is about the relationship of two brothers who have not seen each other in six years and the rest of the characters are there to more the story along. The sci-fy element is strong but it has so much more depth than that. Why do critics have to pigeon hole movies then review them depending upon their genre. This crosses genres and is better for it. The acting is great, the soundtrack is fantastic, the special effects are subtle, the performances are brilliant, James Franco makes a great baddie, cinematography is stunning. How can this average 3 stars. Please can more film makers make sci-fy thought provoking like this rather than the mundane superhero junk or star wars regurgitation of a screenplay from the 1970's.

A fun road movie with sci-fi and crime elements - Kin review by BG

Kin is an interesting mash of genres. Eli (Myles Truitt) is an adopted African-American boy of 14 reeling from the death of his mother, and trying to live up to his father's tough expectations. The return of his jailbird older brother Jimmy (Reynor) does little to stabilise things at home, especially when it turns out he owes a huge sum of protection money to James Franco's enjoyably sleazy ex-con 'Taylor'. All of that excludes a Detroit setting that looks so poor and virtually bombed-out that it could be a demilitarised zone, and Eli's discovery of several dead high-tech soldiers in futuristic armour, and a peculiar weapon...

To avoid spoilers I'll give the vaguest brush-strokes about the plot, and say that things deteriorate sharply, and soon Jimmy has tricked Eli into a road trip west, hotly pursued by Taylor's nasty gang and a pair of future-warriors who've realised that their Armoury is short by one piece of extremely destructive weaponry.

Reynor is as good as he's ever been, playing amiable, nervy, juvenile and self-hating in rapid rotation, and Zoe Kravitz is an enormous boost to the cast when she joins the film about a third of the way through, bringing a laid-back confidence and level head to events.

Myles Truitt is superb as Eli, shouldering much of the film and displaying an extremely broad range of nuance and talent. The scenes where he talks with Kravitz are perfectly pitched, and it feels like we must be looking at a future star in the making.

In terms of tone and action, the film veers between road movie, family drama, heist film, chase movie and action-film. It never gets dull, the action is nicely spaced-out throughout the film, the array of characters encountered along the way remains consistently interesting, and the stakes keep escalating until a climax that brings action, emotion, explosions, extremely flashy SFX, and some gorgeously slick stunts (this may include the most stylish flip across a car hood in recent film history).

Although it does commit one sin that I abundantly detest (sequel-baiting), thankfully it does remember to make this a complete, satisfying film in its own right first.

The violence and language might make this a touch unsuitable for viewers under 10, but I think the '15' rating might be a little harsh, and it's probably due to some of the brief themes and visuals during one key scene.

It's also a film with a very nice visual colour palette and some interesting ideas. I certainly wouldn't be sad if they followed this up in a timely fashion, and gave us a 'Kin 2'.

Good to average, fun to watch, nice n gritty drama, but far from original! - Kin review by CS

I still can't decide whether I think this is a good film or just yet another average plodding along B Movie! The storyline is far from original and has been done before so many times in so many formats. This is basically a brother bonding road movie that has been given a si-fi element to beef it up a bit and a few criminal elements to give it some action. Otherwise it really is simply a road movie about two brothers bonding whilst on a road trip, morality message thrown in, oh and of course one has to also throw in the obligatory female just for the sake of it, even though she's completely irrelevant to the story! Zoe Kravitz, who plays the love interest in this, her acting is very average and having seen her in a number of other films, I get the distinct impression that she is only getting the parts because of who her father is (Lenny Kravitz), a bit like Jaden Smith syndrome! The acting from the two leads is solid and so is the direction, it is quite a good film, but I found it dragged in parts and seemed to have a very strong interracial message, which is a good thing, but very American and it was quite predictable who the Aliens were and what connection the young lad had to them. And of course they simply couldn't help setting us up for a sequel towards the end, which really annoys me in films! When this started and we saw the shot of the housing estate, I thought it was a low budget Film Foundation affair, where they fund up and coming film makers, as it had that kind of feel to it, as if most of the people involved had just come out of Art College and were making their first steps into the industry!