BSFFF Day 4: Boy 7 (2015)

 2015 Boston Science Fiction Film Festival:  As a diehard Boston Science Fiction Festival attendee I pride myself on attempting to make every showing. Now realistically this is not really possible. One of the greater challenges in doing this is the New England winter. This winter in particular has been a challenge, three major snow storms in three weeks and another one on the way for the Marathon part of the festival has made getting into and parking at Davis square a real challenge. On the fourth night of the festival, Monday we had an all day storm that at my house in Hudson MA added 15 more inches of snow on top of the 49 we got the previous couple weeks. I spent a good deal of time just gettin my driveway clear so I could venture into town.
  The travel was a bit chaotic coming in on route 2, I saw two separate spin outs coming over the hill in Arlington and sat in traffic waiting for an opportunity to get off the main road and slip and slide up Lake Ave. Eventually I did make it in and with two other brave souls got to watch the feature.



Boy 7 (2015) - In dutch and unfortunately on this night without subtitles made the viewing a bit more challenging but remarkably not impossible. If any part of this is off I apologize but this is what it seemed to be about.Starting on a train where a young man wakes and does not remember who he is. He immediately has to fight and flee against other young people. With the help of a beautiful girl and his own notebook she returns to him he has to piece back together that has happened to get him here. Sam (Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen) is a troubled youth entered into a reform school by his mother. This is a school with secrets though, not your usual department of youth services place. It is a training school for a shadowing group training youth to be assassins. Locked in and really with little chance of escape, Sam is taught to hack computers, fight and in general be a sort of agent for the organization. He befriends Lara (Ella-June Henrard) and the story builds nicely as the Sam starts to figure out what really is going on in the facility. When he discovers that graduating from beginner to second level means receiving a personalized implant in your neck which renders you a drone for the institute he looks for a way to escape and change his fate.
  It is a taught action thriller and the film tells a compelling story as Sam figures out the dangers of his situation and tries to find a way to get out. Now it is possible that not having subtitles and still being able to fallow the story could be seen as a negative. Is the story so basic that it is predictable? To a certain extent this is true, but you could say that about most action type movies. The main character is going to be on a grand journey taking risks and in the end overcoming the obstacles to win the day.  I will try to see this again with the subtitles but like I said earlier it is a pretty decipherable film without them. Since the type of film gives away what is inevitable in the plot I won't talk about it anymore. Safe to say that this one is fun and should be seen.