High Concept, Big CGI, but unconvincing

Rating: 5/10 (14 February 2014)

It's been 50 years since the Earth was attacked by an alien race called Formics. The human race survived by a single act of heroism. Now earth has gathered the most gifted children to train for commanding an earth fleet to annihilate the aliens with a super weapon.
There are a lot of great things in this movie. The CGI effects look great. There is a really fun looking zero G training game. I would love to play it in real life. It looks insanely fun. The actors do a good job especially the kids Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld. Harrison Ford plays the hard nose trainer. The best adult actor is Ben Kingsley with the wild facial tattoo. As for the battle, it all feels very removed. It has the playing-a-video-game quality. It doesn't lend itself for intensity. It looks amazing, but it doesn't feel exciting.
The story is trying to mind bend the audience with a crazy moral argument. It does it ham fisted and oddly. Instead of poignant or compelling, it's head scratching and confused. The idea is a little too academic and has little use in reality. If the book was about this one idea, then it fails. 'Hunger Games' asks a similar morality question infinitely better. This is a high concept movie with big budget CGI and soon forgotten.