Kin
“Without an independent arc, Zoë Kravitz’s character exists mainly to provide emotional support for the male protagonist.”
Title: Kin (2018)
Directors: Jonathan Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Josh Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Daniel Casey 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the short film “Bag Man” by Jonathan Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Josh Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Mimi 👩🏻🇺🇸
Note: This review was commissioned by Lionsgate. The content and methodology remain 100% independent and in line with Mediaversity's non-commissioned reviews.
—SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 3/5
Riding the recent wave of speculative stories to hit the screen, from the dystopian to the supernatural, Kin takes a lighter approach to its sci-fi premise. The debut feature from brothers and co-directors Jonathan and Josh Baker grew out of their short film “Bag Man” (2014) about a latchkey kid who comes into the possession of a powerful weapon not of this world. In Kin, the adolescent Eli (Myles Truitt) initially doesn’t do much with the hi-tech gun, other than pose with it in secret to try and feel tougher than he actually is. Eli struggles to measure up to his adoptive father Hal (Dennis Quaid), a working-class widower with a no-nonsense attitude when it comes to making an honest living. Hal comes down even harder on his biological son Jimmy (Jack Reynor), who has just been paroled from prison. As predicted, Jimmy brings trouble in the form of an unpaid debt that he owes a very bad criminal by the name of Taylor Balik (played by James Franco with a neck tattoo). Suffice to say, a heist goes wrong, Eli and Jimmy’s father winds up dead, and the two brothers go on the run.
Leaning heavily on action to drive the narrative forward, the plot improbably escalates with not one but multiple outlaws, including Taylor and his gang, pursuing the brothers. Tracking the futuristic weapon are a pair of motorcycle-riding, helmet-wearing Daft-Punk-look alikes.
The filmmakers tapped the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai to create a brooding soundtrack, perhaps hoping to add to the edgy vibe. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason behind the directional choices other than someone suggesting, “Wouldn’t it be cool if this happened?” Consequently, Kin certainly entertains and even surprises, if only because of several absurd twists.
Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
In the role of Milly, Zoë Kravitz brings a sweetness to her interpretation of the “dancer (stripper) with a heart of gold” trope. She drops into the brothers’ lives after they show up to a club with a duffel bag full of cash, which Taylor had attempted to steal from their father’s construction site. When Jimmy gets into a scuffle with the club owner and accidentally leaves his loot behind, Milly escapes with the brothers and masterminds a plan to help them retrieve their money. Standing in as a big sister, Milly bonds with Eli by over their shared experience in the foster care system. But without an independent arc, her character exists mainly to provide emotional support for Eli.
Race: 4.25/5
As the Baker brothers tell it, Michael B. Jordan loved the short film and “wanted to see more young black characters in sci-fi.” Jordan not only served as an executive producer on the project, but also makes a cameo that was kept tightly under wraps. (Truly, I did not see it coming.)
Watching “Bag Man,” I can certainly understand how the original source material might have appealed to the actor, best known for his role as Killmonger in the Afrofuturistic Black Panther (2018). Kin remains faithful to the portrayal of a lonely Black boy, whose discovery of a mysterious weapon allows him to become something of a superhero. In their big-screen adaption, however, the filmmakers remove the protagonist from his Black mother and neighborhood, instead placing him in the care of a white adoptive family. The decision—done for casting reasons, I assume—alters the context of Eli’s feeling of isolation, for better or for worse. Despite the connection Eli makes with Milly, the first Black person he encounters in the film, the issue of race never really comes up.
I found it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief about not only the plot, but also the lack of acknowledgement regarding Eli’s Blackness, especially during the climactic shootout at a police station involving Taylor’s men. Given the history of police violence and the ways in which Black people are targeted in the United States, the optics of a Black child having to defend himself with an over-the-top gun, while his white assailants murder policemen in cold blood, all sat very weirdly. Here is where Jordan’s deus-ex-machina cameo spares the film from ending in tragedy. Shoehorned in as it was, the Black Panther star’s unexpected appearance temporarily neutralized whatever my feelings were about the film’s treatment of race. Instead, I became entirely distracted by the last-minute info dump about the weapon, the universe it comes from, and how Jordan’s character and Eli both fit into it all.
Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.42/5
Despite the potential set-up for a sequel, Kin’s critical and commercial failure have all but dashed those dreams. In the current era of direct-to-streaming releases, I do wonder if the film might have found a more forgiving audience in the casual home-viewer. What the movie lacks in substance, though, it makes up for with mindless fun.