★★★★★RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 15 | SVOD Director Jeff Chan Cast Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell, Sirena Gulamgaus, Altair Vincent
NETFLIX The Amell Bros (Green Arrow and Firestorm from the Arrowverse) are back with more bargain bin X-Men: Days Of Future Past-style shenanigans. In a world where 4% of humans are superpowered (but a film where 99% of the characters are, making plot twists wearyingly predictable), the “powered” are subject to draconian laws and farmed for a drug extracted from their spinal cords.
Garrett (Stephen Amell) is now in charge of harvesting and distributing the drug. He’s formed a dodgy pact with an ambitious LA cop, Sergeant Kingston – who’s introduced robot police dogs to control the powered – to make sure that Kingston’s K-9s turn a blind sensor to his shady business practices. But Kingston’s attack dogs have a deadly secret, which Connor (Robbie Amell) discovers when he becomes guardian to a teenage powered with a rare ability.
While the first film was a better-than-you’d-expect micro-budget SF film, this is an exactly-what-you’d-expect sequel: relentlessly plot-led, with characters who act almost exclusively as exposition machines, fast-cut action designed to disguise basic fight choreography, and off-the-shelf CG effects. The Amell brothers bring some charm to it, but generally Code 8: Part II is competently made but woefully derivative.