Better than The Force Awakens, at least

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2017)

As a STAR WARS movie, ROGUE ONE is another mixed-bag affair, thankfully better than the last in the series (THE FORCE AWAKENS) but not exactly what I could term 'great'. I don't think that the overrated Gareth Edwards makes a very good job of the direction, relying on cliché too much (the good guys hitting everything that moves, the bad guys constantly missing) and doing the stupid inter-cutting of fight scenes that result in headaches and a lack of flow. He certainly showed promise with his debut feature MONSTERS, but both this and GODZILLA have been more than a little disappointing.
Unlike THE FORCE AWAKENS, ROGUE ONE is a stand-alone prequel that sets up the events of A NEW HOPE. The bits that tie in to A NEW HOPE are done pretty decently, and I liked the appearance of Dareth Vader (great to have James Earl Jones back once more), a young Princess Leia, and a CGI Peter Cushing, who all add to the flow (a shame Cushing's voice was wrong, though). As for the new cast members, the leads (Diego Luna and Felicity Jones) are bland but the supporting members are better, particularly Alan Tudyk's sarcastic robot and Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen as an ass-kicking tag team of Jedi fighters.
The first hour and a half of this film are slow and stately and more than a little boring, with long stretches of setting up where little happens. The CGI is okay but too much of it looks like CGI. Thankfully, things build to a great beach assault battle sequence at the climax, which is very well achieved and brings some fun and excitement back to the franchise; it's the best scene in a STAR WARS film since RETURN OF THE JEDI.