Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld
Fifty years after the human race survived a war with an alien army, there are still military forces being trained for future defence, with an emphasis on child recruits who are easier to train effectively. Ender (Butterfield) shows particular promise and his prodigious skills push him to the forefront of a forthcoming conflict.
Being that the science-fiction genre often deals with rather lofty concepts, writers often bering their own political and social ideologies into their work. As such, Orson Scott Card and his series of books from which Ender's Game is adapted are an anomaly. In a genre where the viewpoints are often very progressive (take, for example, Gene Roddenberry and Rod Serling in Star Trek and The Twilight Zone respectively as examples) Card has been the voice of conservatism and, resultantly, controversy.
As a film, Ender's Game tip-toes around these ideas, prodding them in curiosity but maintaining a safe distance. Given the martial themes, with child soldiers no less, the filmmakers have gone on record as distancing themselves from Card's views and the film mostly swerves around the contentious issues, to its credit.The casting features a number of talented young actors who have been acclaimed in other work; Asa Butterfield from Hugo (2011), Hailee Steinfeld from the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit (2011) and Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Harrison Ford doesn't contribute anything revolutionary, but his presence in a film like this just feels right. Butterfield, for his confidence, is not quite believable enough as a prodigious leader of men, but this is more a fault of the problematic screenplay (which gives lines such as "it's basic rocket science") than anything else.
For the fact that it's flawed, Ender's Game will probably never become an enduring sci-fi classic; and unless the film does very well at the box office, I'm not sure if a sequel will be in the offing. Still, the film is tactfully, and at times impressively, executed,
Next time, Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan star in a real-life drama of a woman searching for her adopted son in Philomena.
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