A young boy must discover the origins of his extraordinary powers before he is captured by authorities hell-bent on condemning him for an accidental murder.
I’ve been desperately trying to keep track of both Nat And Alex Wolff ever since The Naked Brothers Band (yes, I’m that old) and preferably speaking, a part of me honestly felt bad when I realized that Nat wasn’t getting nearly as much recognition and big shot production opportunities as his younger brother was, at least not since Paper Towns and Death Note. When I found his name attached to a fantasy adventure origin story called “Mortal”, I kept my fingers crossed hoping that this would be somewhat decent.
Luckily for me, I was right.
Having taken this fantasy story based on Norwegian mythos and grounding it in reality with this dark modern take, the final released product, in style, proves as a better substitute than some of the high-budget, more polished looking Marvel films and in substance, offers a fascinating but overplayed look at what happens when one becomes too dangerous when gifted with powers beyond his or her control even packing a few glaring narrative flaws and odd character choices. When the cinematography isn’t beautifully capturing and visually illustrating the landscapes of Norway (prior to the director being Norwegian as well), it also lends support to building anticipation and suspense sometimes. Editing, I didn’t find problematic, I was able to find some meaning of sympathy, respect and/or care or the characters involved, most of the action sequences displayed and executed were far from shabby, the entire mythos is surrounding Eric’s abilities, how he copes with them, what it all means in the grand scheme of things was something which I found myself absolutely adoring upon closer inspection and Nat Wolff continues to be an under-appreciated actor in my opinion and if he needed anything to REALLY get himself into the limelight again, this would probably be it, given the films open-ended conclusion.
Now I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t all of this sound very similar to Brightburn (which I like even more than this)? As far as the main core idea regarding the plot and protagonist, yes.....but I doubt that was the intended direction. It reminded me more of Sleight mostly due to its virtues: tenderness, imagination, a strong grasp of character and setting and the implications that it held for the world it was set in and based off how it all wrapped up.....yeah, I want a sequel.
Just because you’ve seen it before doesn’t mean it automatically sucks.
