Code 8

I thought the trailer made _Code 8_ look like it was gonna be pretty bad, but I liked the premise, and I wanted to see what Stephen Amell could do in a 2019 feature film, so I gave it a chance, and while I don't think it was great, it was better than I had been expecting. There were some bits that sort of reminded me of last year's _Darkest Minds_, and that's definitely a bad thing, but overall it was actually pretty decent. It goes for both the social commentary, and a *pew pew splodey zap zap* action crime thriller. It doesn't work **spectacularly** as either, but it tries, and its failures certainly are not abysmal ones. _Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._

Code 8 never really grabbed me, though I managed to watch it all the way through. Perhaps I am an outlier viewer, but I would have liked to see more time spent on why society lowered the status of the super-powered people to practically second class citizens. To me that might have been more compelling viewing than the details of Connor’s descent into crime or his mother’s rather stereotypical declining health. But within its narrow plot and limited number of interesting characters, it may have been less than great, but it was better than mediocre.