Review of Ender's Game (2013) by Jonathan B — 22 Sep 2014

Harrison Ford turns kids into intergalactic warriors by making them play video games and fight each other in a futuristic version of paint balling in this adaptation of the Orson Scott Card story. The main flaw in this movie is the fact that it relies so heavily on some truly terrible child actors to drive the plot and also that they spend much of the action talking to each other in rather flat, emotionless technobabble that really doesn't engage the viewer.

Despite his rather unappealing views, I always rather liked Card's novels as they were filled with imagination and interesting ideas about the human condition. This really hasn't translated well to the screen and we get a rather run-of-the-mill affair that doesn't quite seem to know where to pitch itself for an audience.

Harrison Ford is rather disappointing and comes over as a caricature of the cunning, hard nosed army man he should be while Ben Kingsley continues to prove that his magnificent performance in Gandhi was an utter fluke as he is, yet again, awful.

As a lead, Asa Butterfield seems overwhelmed and just downright unlikeable being too priggish to pull off what should be a complex and unsettling character. There are some nice special effects and the final scenes where we actually get to meet the alien menace are actually rather moving but, on the whole, I was disappointed by Ender's Game which is a shame as it could have been so much better.