Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

Anyone remember "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980)? Well this is a sort of hybrid of that and the "Magnificent Seven" that is quite impressive to look at, but that's about the height of it. A political assassinations has destabilised the kingdom and so "General Noble" (Ed Skrein) is off in his Dreadnought to terrorise the inter-planetary population. He arrives on a peaceful agrarian planet, kills the town father and declares that he'll be back in ten weeks to collect their harvest of grain. Panic sets in, especially when the guards he leaves behind try to force themselves on a villager and they encounter the wrath of "Kora" (Sofia Boutella). She's pretty nimble with her weaponry (so we just know there's a story here somewhere) and also manages to convince the town wimp "Gunnar" (Michael Huisman) that they must set off to recruit some help they can use to thwart the destruction of their livelihoods by "Noble". What we have now are a series predicable, set-piece, escapades as gradually they assemble a disparate band of rogues and criminals who might just want to take on the general in an hopelessly one-sided contest. You might detect the voice of Sir Anthony Hopkins ("Jimmy") and Charlie Hunnam sports a variable Irish accent as the famed "Kai" as this follows extremely well trammelled lines of adventure mixed with romance, political intrigue and some whizzo special effects. The denouement is straight out of "Attack of the Clones" (2002) and sets us up for a second instalment that you could probably just about map out now. I like the genre and I didn't hate the film, but it's disappointingly derivative and - well, you've just seen it all before.