Predator.
Bromwell High.
Assault on Precinct Thirteen.
The London Riots of 2011.
Doctor Who.
I really, really wasn't ready to enjoy this movie quite so completely. I really reacted viscerally, emotionally to the mugging at the beginning of the movie. I fell right into the director's trap, almost rooting for the invading alien when the kids to whom my friend, a teacher, referred as "the kind of kids I teach" - meaning poor, at-risk, with violent tendencies - were up against it.
Beautiful manipulation, and it barely took anything.
Of course, the movie was much more topical than may have been intended. Once the cops get involved, in callous opposition to the embattled erstwhile antiheroes, you start to feel unusual about your convictions. Should we be so cavalier about the arrival of "the cavalry"?
A little like Moon and Hobo with a Shotgun, this movie is part of a growing body of evidence that the cheaper you make it, the more personal and the freer from the machinery of spectacle-building, the more awesome the overall experience.
It's why the first Iron Man felt like a real movie, and the second one like a colouring book.
