I get it, people think movies about young kids doing crimes are cool, especially when those crimes are framed as anti-establishment. The problem is, when so many films have done it before, the viewer can anticipate the same beats anytime a new film comes up. It’s not that hard to guess what might happen. Nine times out of ten, the plot will revolve around a new young kid (perhaps he has a special talent or skill) being introduced to a team of misfits. At first the kid is unsure if he wants to be a criminal, but then he goes all in. All of the sudden, the new kid has risen to the top and is practically the new leader of the group, which causes much drama amongst the original crew. That drama develops until everything comes crashing down at the end.  Echo Boomers takes the same tired, boring plot of so many other films, and hits copy/paste. 

The film opens with a writer interviewing a young man named Lance. She wants to write a book about the crimes that he’s committed. She wants to tell “his story” and try to understand why he did the things he did. Lance looks at the writer and says he can certainly tell her his story, but she might not understand. When she asks Lance why, he simply tells her that she’s too old to get it (commence eye rolling.) The following first twenty minutes of the film is jammed packed with narration Zombieland style with rules, montages, and full backstories for every character on screen. Instead of allowing you to learn the tricks of the trade and the personalities of the characters through Lance’s virgin eyes, the audience is simply fed all the information like Neo learning kung-fu in The Matrix. So much information at once didn’t enlighten me as much as it bored me to death. 

The passage of time in Echo Boomers is off as well. At one point, Lance is the new kid on the crew, but less than 5 minutes later, he was already involved in a coup. I couldn’t tell if they had just leaped forward in time, or if all of this took place over a matter of 48 hours. Either way, the film was so predictable, I really could care less. The main character, Lance, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger (omg, I JUST REALIZED this is Arnold’s son), was wooden and dull as hell. Hayley Law, of Riverdale, wasn’t given enough screen time for you to care about why she was sulking all the time. Alex Pettfyer, of I Am Number Four, gave a lackluster performance that matched the rest of the misfit crew. Finally, even the great Michael Shannon couldn’t lift this film with his limited screen time. That’s not to say the entire film was gloomy. The one ray of sunlight came in the form of Gilles Geary, who plays Jack. Geary’s character, like the script, was incredibly predictable, but Geary gave a fresh and energetic performance that clearly elevated him above his co-stars. I wouldn’t mind seeing him on screen again in better films.

I think the film was supposed to present some kind of message about kids in their twenties who were abandoned by the system, but honestly, I struggled to give a shit. Sure, I believe that the rich continue to get richer, and the divide between them and the rest of the country gets wider by the day. Still, if this film indeed had something to say, it was drowned out by the stupidity and over the top manufactured sob stories of its characters. There was no one to root for, no one to care about, and yet an abundance of personalities to despise. I came out of this film less pissed off at the system, and more annoyed that I had lost an hour and a half of my life. What could have been some kind of modern, millennial version of Bonnie and Clyde or a 2020 take on Young Guns, Echo Boomers just makes you hope that the majority of the millennial generation aren’t as stupid and pathetic as this film portrays them to be.

RORSCHACH RATING

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Victims and Villains is written Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey (and produced by) and more. Music by Mallory Johnson and others. Echo Boomers is property of Saban Films. We do not own nor claim any rights. Echo Boomers is now available on VOD and digital. It is also now playing in select theaters.

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