In a gang ridden area of London, teenager Tom Harvey (Bill Milner) finally gets the opportunity to approach his crush Lucy Walker (Maisie Williams) and the two arrange a study session later that evening. When Tom arrives, he finds the door broken and a gang of figures having assaulted and raped Lucy. One of the gang shoots tom in the head and fragments of Tom's iPhone become embedded in his brain. With Lucy still in shock from her trauma and Tom feeling guilty for having fled, Tom tries to be there for Lucy while also harboring rage for the gang who assaulted her. Eventually Tom sees projections of IT data coming from surrounding electronics and discovers he can hack into these devices and even overload them. Using this power, Tom discovers the identity of one of the gang members from the assault and uses his powers to embark on a crusade of vigilante justice against the gang from the bottom up as the hacker vigilante IBoy.
IBoy is a 2017 adaptation of the Kevin Brooks YA novel of the same name. The screenplay was adapted by Joe Barton who had previously created the BBC period drama Our World War, and written some episodes for the Channel 4 sci-fi drama Humans. The film marks the second directorial feature of Adam Randall following his 2016 film Level Up. At its core the movie is a basic vigilante film with an absurd tech/quasi-superhero element to it, but provided you can swallow the film's rather outlandish premise it delivers exactly what you expect from a film like this.
The movie features two solid leads in Bill Milner as Tom Harvey/iBoy and Maisie Williams as Lucy Walker respectively. The two have a natural chemistry that comes through in their interactions and you buy into their relationship because they convey so much richness to their interactions. While like many vigilante movies Lucy's rape is a catalyst for Tom to go on a rampage, Lucy is given more agency here than Carol Kersey for example from Death Wish who spent the film catatonic so she was pretty much a non-entity while Paul went on his rampage. While the standards for women roles in these types of movies are a pretty low bar with films like Ms.45, I Spit on Your Grave, or Billy Jack being the only examples I can think of to try make a statement about rape (whether it was successful or not will vary by POV), iBoy does okay with the topic and it does give Lucy's character a cathartic scene to confront her pathetic attackers despite still bogged down by the inherent baggage that comes with the subgenre.
The real selling point for any vigilante film is the vigilantism and assuming you can look past the very silly explanation for Tom's hacker wizard powers, the gimmick does lend itself to some creative sequences of Tom/iBoy messing with these hateful gangs and drug dealers and Adam Randall does keep the film visually interesting emphasizing the steel and glass of modern London with the cyber gimmick of AR overlays being pretty entertaining and reasonably well integrated. The movie does drag a bit in its climax with the ultimate confrontation of the gang's leader with our protagonists but despite not being as entertaining as the other scenes it is sold by the performers and Maisie Williams gets some solid opportunities to showcase her acting prowess.
IBoy is your basic vigilante movie with a modern gimmick tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of technological creep and modern gritty superhero tropes. Bill Milner and Maisie Williams both give good performances and have solid chemistry and keep the film engaging. While the movie taps into the expected tropes of the subgenre (including those regarding women) it does try to address issues rather than sweep them aside like so many others in the subgenre. If you like vigilante films you'll find plenty of moments to enjoy as iBoy messes with these gangs and drug dealers in entertainingly violent fashion.
IBoy is a 2017 adaptation of the Kevin Brooks YA novel of the same name. The screenplay was adapted by Joe Barton who had previously created the BBC period drama Our World War, and written some episodes for the Channel 4 sci-fi drama Humans. The film marks the second directorial feature of Adam Randall following his 2016 film Level Up. At its core the movie is a basic vigilante film with an absurd tech/quasi-superhero element to it, but provided you can swallow the film's rather outlandish premise it delivers exactly what you expect from a film like this.
The movie features two solid leads in Bill Milner as Tom Harvey/iBoy and Maisie Williams as Lucy Walker respectively. The two have a natural chemistry that comes through in their interactions and you buy into their relationship because they convey so much richness to their interactions. While like many vigilante movies Lucy's rape is a catalyst for Tom to go on a rampage, Lucy is given more agency here than Carol Kersey for example from Death Wish who spent the film catatonic so she was pretty much a non-entity while Paul went on his rampage. While the standards for women roles in these types of movies are a pretty low bar with films like Ms.45, I Spit on Your Grave, or Billy Jack being the only examples I can think of to try make a statement about rape (whether it was successful or not will vary by POV), iBoy does okay with the topic and it does give Lucy's character a cathartic scene to confront her pathetic attackers despite still bogged down by the inherent baggage that comes with the subgenre.
The real selling point for any vigilante film is the vigilantism and assuming you can look past the very silly explanation for Tom's hacker wizard powers, the gimmick does lend itself to some creative sequences of Tom/iBoy messing with these hateful gangs and drug dealers and Adam Randall does keep the film visually interesting emphasizing the steel and glass of modern London with the cyber gimmick of AR overlays being pretty entertaining and reasonably well integrated. The movie does drag a bit in its climax with the ultimate confrontation of the gang's leader with our protagonists but despite not being as entertaining as the other scenes it is sold by the performers and Maisie Williams gets some solid opportunities to showcase her acting prowess.
IBoy is your basic vigilante movie with a modern gimmick tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of technological creep and modern gritty superhero tropes. Bill Milner and Maisie Williams both give good performances and have solid chemistry and keep the film engaging. While the movie taps into the expected tropes of the subgenre (including those regarding women) it does try to address issues rather than sweep them aside like so many others in the subgenre. If you like vigilante films you'll find plenty of moments to enjoy as iBoy messes with these gangs and drug dealers in entertainingly violent fashion.