Reviews

--Too Many Coincidences--

Poe's contact for the map to Luke just happens to be on the planet where the Millennium Falcon was last sold AND where one of Luke's apprentices is in hiding AND where Han and Chewie just happen to be hanging out in orbit? On the whole sparsely populated planet, BB-8 just happens to bump into Luke's old apprentice? Finn bumps into her, too?

Han takes the heroes from Jakku to a backwater bar in the Outer Rim to hide, but that bar just happens to have spies from the rebels AND the New Order just sitting around waiting for the droid AND Luke's lightsabre just happens to be in the basement?

The New Order conveniently arrives 30s after the heroes land anywhere? Poe gets five lines on Jakku before the drop ships arrive. Han and the heroes barely get time for a drink at his so-called "hidden bar" before the New Order starts blowing the place up. How convenient that they always seem to be right where the heroes are, just after they arrive.

--Too Many Non-Sequitors--

Finn is separated from his family as an infant, put under harsh conditioning, given a designation and not a name ... to be made a sanitation worker?

New Order conditioning is so strong it gets defended vs. clones by Finn's commander, but Finn doesn't even show signs of any conditioning at all? Finn's commander says Finn has never been an issue before ... but this is first mission?

The Millennium Falcon hasn't flown in decades and is owned by a guy who clearly sells parts for a living but he doesn't take a single part off this ageing freighter, and the heroes can get in and start her up without an issue?

The New Order spends trillions of credits on a ridiculous super weapon that drains the sole source of light, heat, and gravity in the system? Don't get me started on the "beams across the galaxy" BS, or that two shots drain the star. How many trillion credit super weapons have to go up in flames before the baddies figure out this is a colossal waste of resources?

Rey stops in the middle of a duel on the edge of a precipice, closes her eyes, and spends 30s meditating on the force, and the baddie in front of her, who has just killed his own father, doesn't just force push her into the crevasse and walk away?

R2-D2 just sits in stasis waiting ... for what?

--Hello, Mary Sue, Good Bye Brain--

Rey is a Mary Sue, or a character that's too perfect.

She's a scavenger for parts, bartering parts for food and living in a lean-to in the desert, spending the overwhelming bulk of her days alone.

Despite this, she speaks multiple languages fluently, including both the languages she needs to understand Chewie and BB-8, despite no visible experience with either Wookies or Droids. She's a master of hand to hand combat, able to defeat multiple foes with a stick. Somehow, living alone out in the desert with no money or friends, she's figured out how to pilot a starship, and hops in the Millennium Falcon and takes a 50 year old ship she's never flown in before directly into combat manoeuvres. She only needs to experience the force one time before she starts using force powers herself, including ones she's never seen demonstrated at all (but which have been used in other movies, natch). The first time she picks up a lightsabre, she out duels a Knight of Ren who is so high in the New Order hierarchy that he speaks directly to Snokes and hangs around with generals.

JJ Abrams was clearly desperate for a girl power heroine, to the point where he used the schlocky, "Why are you holding my hand?" lines to specifically point it out. Blech.

--Odds and Ends--

The pacing is too quick and comes at the expense of the characters and story. Kylo Ren is a pretty non-scary antagonist. The dialogue around Han Solo's death was laughably bad. JJ Abrams uses deus ex machina events/characters too often.

Bianca (Holly) and Lawrence (Shay) turn in very decent acting turns as the jaded pro looking for her exit from the business and the naive, young girl from the sticks thrust onto the street, respectively. They make the most of a basically unbelievable plot that relies far too much on outrageous coincidence to move the story along.

Example One: Holly's controlling, abusive boyfriend just happens to pick her last night in town to suggest they leave it all behind, just happens to ask her where she'd go if she had no limits, and this supposedly streetwise pro who's leaving him behind just happens to be stupid enough to tell him precisely where she's headed.

Example Two: Holly's last trick before leaving is a dual job, needing a brunette, but her normal partner just happens to slip in the shower just before Holly shows up at her flat and is unconscious (dead?) when Holly arrives. Holly leaves and her cabbie just happens to nearly run down Shay, who just happens to be brunette, just happens to be a prostitute and just happens to be in town for her first night on the street.

And the most unbelievable part is that Holly is even considering turning the trick in the first place! A fellow pro gifts her with a wad of cash as a going away present in the previous scene and she's leaving in only a few hours, so that trick is wholly unnecessary ... but she takes it anyway.

Suspension of disbelief was nearly impossible for me with this script.

The movie is further hampered by the cartoonish supporting characters. The male antagonists are little more than brutes with suits, with Docker (Ligurian), Holly's erstwhile boyfriend, providing the emotional menace in the beginning and Phillips (Bennett) providing the physical menace for the latter half. Both are bad cops, but we never find out why, never get any context for their clearly violent natures, and are left with two dimensional caricatures to work with.

After witnessing Bennett senselessly off their john over a drug transaction that actually went well, the two women flee. With more unbelievable coincidences at his disposal, Bennett successfully tracks them down in a city of half a million people, and the latter half of the film is him chasing the women from scene to scene, ineffectually, while absorbing a truly unbelievable amount of punishment in the process. Just once I'd like to see someone get hit by a car and not walk away.

The rest of the cast seem to be there for one purpose only, to illustrate over and over precisely how naive Shay is. We see an awkward moment with a john, an awkward moment with a competitor and her pimp, a couple of awkward moments with a street kid who fleeces her, and an awkward moment with a couple of junkies. This is just plain old ham-fisted directing. Lawrence's facial expressions and body language told us that her character was a hick from the sticks in her first scene. The rest was just superfluous.

In the end, the film was enjoyable, however plasticine it ultimate turned out to be, but mostly because the female leads are stunning and spend at least part of the movie unclothed. The growing friendship is clearly the only deep part of the entire movie.

Synopsis? It's a moderately exciting thriller, with a couple of very decent actresses succeeding despite a bad script and some average directing.