Oh hey, anyone else remember Push, that gritty Chris Evans superhero movie? No? OK then, don’t mind me…
I only bring it up because I’m sort of fascinated by Hollywood attempts to keep trying to offer up a “realistic” movie with superpowers in it that doesn’t spring from the pages of a major comic book. Alongside Push, other examples include Jumper, Poject Power and Chronicle and despite their attempts to deliver a more down to earth look at outlandish abilities, most of them seem doomed to be forgotten when compared to the household names of DC, Marvel and the like.
Making a play to change that is Code 8, Jeff Chan’s expansion of his own short film that hopes to give the genre a more tangible feel by blending zappy powers and unbreakable skin with the grime and stakes of a modern day crime movie. So do we get X-Men meets Heat, or is it more like a league of unextraordinary gentlemen?
In the early 20th century, superhuman abilities are real, which creates a world both different and eerily familiar to the one we have today. All “Powers” have to be registered to the government and from that they became integral to the workforce as their abilities help build a “city of tomorrow” that became known as Lincoln City which, in turn, created an economic boom. However, this is where things get noticably rough for the Powers, because as this kicked off a third industrial revolution, the entire race was soon marginalised as mechanization and automation quickly became the norm – ie. cool looking robots taking the strain.
What this all means these days is that Powers are treated like the underclass as normal folk tend to hate and fear the fact that some of those abilities can be pretty damn threatening. Forced to scratch out an existence, a lot of Powers have either turned to crime, or are being trafficked for their spinal fluid in order to help manufacture an addictive new drug named Psyke. In this grim existence we meet Connor Reed, a 26 year-old with electric powers who us trying to look after his ailing mother after a brain tumour is making her ice abilities gradually go out of control. Unable to find work as his mother slaves away at a convenience store, Connor soon falls in with telekinetic criminal Garrett, who works under the mind reading crime lord, Sutcliffe doing various heists and bank jobs. However, after the police has managed to raid and confiscate large quantities of his production of Psyke, Sutcliffe needs to get back in the good books with his various partners.
Before you know it, Connor has joined Garrett’s gang of lawless supes in the hope of getting in with Nia, Sutcliffe’s own personal healer; but with an automated police force having little tolerance for super powered criminals, can our hero stay alive long enough to use Nia to save his mother?
Code 8 is one of those films where it seems that far more thought has gone into its world building than what’s gone into the other aspects of the plot. A whole timeline has been created for this alternate reality that stretches back decades to drop metahumans into our everyday life and, at multiple times, it almost feels like the sort of mix of sci-fi and gritty social commentary that used to be chiefly handled by the likes of Neill Blomkamp. Jeff Chan certainly has the visuals down cold as the blending of crime flick and super powers means that we get a certain amount of dsytopian urban decay while it wisely downplays the fantastical attributes of the leads – in fact, we even get a Elysium/Chappie-style robot police force dubbed the Guardians to really push that Blomkamp feeling home. While other films that have attempted to use sci-fi/fantasy tropes as a metaphor for the underclass tend to trip over their own world building (Bright, I’m looking at you), Code 8 manages to balance it better than some.
Also working well is the hierarchy of this world that delivers urban bigotry that doesn’t make the mistake of overwriting the fact that actual racism has to still exist. Yes, the film switches out Mexican day labourers for Powers hoping to get hired for cheap building work, but it’s not so in love with it’s alternate history that makes any boneheaded plays that prove to downplay other cultural ills. The crime stuff works pretty well too, with the gang that Robbie Amell’s Connor falls in with using familiar power sets for different uses as the various heists are planned. Augmented strength, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, telekinesis; each ability is portrayed nicely subtle in order to slot into the more down-beat, stripped back tone of the film – which is a fairly odd thing to say about a film with robot cops.
However, even though the look and extensive backstory of Code 8 give a novel spin to some familiar genres that – while hardly super original – work pretty well, it’s with the characters themselves that the movie experiences it’s Kryptonite – some pretty basic charactizations. While there’s nothing objectively wrong with them, there’s nothing that particularly stands out about them either and their personalities and experiences feel less born from the situations that they’re in and more from the fact that the script is cribbing heavily from the crime movie playbook. Connor is every young man in a crime movie that’s ever crackled with potential (no pun intended), who just can’t get a shot at a real life because of what he is; and similarly, Arrow’s Stephen Amell (Robbie’s real-life cousin) is every charismatic, criminal who is just waiting for their shot at the big time. Literally the only thing separating them from every other crime movie archetype is the fact they have funky powers, but it’s not quite enough to make it feel much more than just a remix of everything you’ve seen dozens of times before.
Regrettably, that also means that there isn’t a huge amount of surprises to be had here either and it’s rather abrupt finish suggests that Code 8 may have been better served as a TV show rather than a film in order to give the various characters just as much room to breathe as it does the enthusiastic world building. Still, robot cops, zappy powers and the occasional bank job are a tough nut to make completely boring, and so even though some threads are starved a little for attention (Sung Kang’s empathy driven cop could have used a bit more screen time), we get just enough to whet our appetite. Of course, once again, a more grounded approach to super powers ends up not having the support of a major hero to fully give it the recognition of its Marvel/DC funded peers, but even though the smaller scale is refreshing, a mere ninety minutes just doesn’t have the power to do it justice.
A longer runtime or punchier characters may have benefited the film and helped it be a bit more memorable than it is. But when it comes to smashing superhero and crime genres together like gritty action figures, Code 8 does just enough to avoid a code red.
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