Starts a little rough but gets there, sort of

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2016)

It's Star Wars, and the events that led up to Luke setting off on his heroic journey. And there's no Jar Jar, thank the maker.
The first half of the movie is muddy on plot and could have used streamlining to go straight for the goal of finding Galen Erso, reluctant Death Star engineer. It involves a convoluted storyline of the rebel alliance randomly finding and rescuing Jyn Erso from an Imperial work colony, or was it random? I couldn't tell.
Moving on, the plot next involves the rebel alliance convincing Jyn to work with them to find rebellious rebel and sometimes crazy person Saw Gerrera. They also want to find a traitor Imperial pilot who's working for Galen Erso to point everyone to getting the Death Star plans for the rebel alliance. Or something along those lines. The bottom line is: get the Death Star plans to the rebel alliance by using the traitor Imperial pilot as the courier of a message about the Death Star's weakness and Galen's family exposition meant for Jyn, only the courier goes to Saw Gerrera instead of the rebels and didn't bother looking for Jyn for some reason.
Right, the plot bobs and weaves until Jyn and her rebels track down Galen Erso, who promptly dies during a rebel bombardment of the Imperial research station where he's been working. Jyn and her companions then try to convince the rebels to do something about the Death Star, but they refuse. Our heroes then attack the Imperial data storage facility planet that houses the Death Star plans on their own, drawing in everyone for a fairly significant battle. The movie picks up here with the space combat and the assault on the storage facility, and was more interesting than the first half.
The film was mostly enjoyable, but there are a few logic problems that turned up, so it takes a strong suspension of disbelief to get into it. The Death Star plans and its weakness are summed up by Galen Erso in his hologram message smuggled out by the Imperial Pilot, so why need the plans if everyone knows the rebel pilots could fly down the trench and drop bombs in the thermal exhaust port? Also, why bother going after Galen Erso in the first place, if the Death Star is already built? If the space station were still in planning stages, this might be more understandable. A certain important character later ends up with the Death Star plans, and she's just been hanging around during the big space battle at the end for what reason?
Anyway, stealing the Death Star plans as the story goal is another problem, since this a prequel and everyone on this planet probably already knows the outcome of the mission. I suppose that leaves us wondering about what happens to the heroes of this story as a reason to watch it. But it's Star Wars, so watching is fun. Just don't focus on the logic problems and enjoy the big battle toward the end of the movie and remind yourself there's no Jar Jar.