The Rebels Live-From The Star War Series-“Rogue One”(2016)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Rogue One, starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna and a cast of thousands of earthlings and others from the inter-planetary, inter-galactic, inter-universe community, 2016    

I am sure that the writers, directors, and producers of the latest sci-fi adventure, Rogue One, in the now seemingly never-ending Star War   series did not intend to make a political statement about current world politics, especially the latest developments in America (they like the rest of us probably assumed that Hillary would win) but the story line is a rather up-to-date commentary, a cautionary tale on what lies ahead if you will. The idea that a small band of multi-cultural rebels from various planets, solar systems, galaxies, the universe are compelled for their own survival to fight the evil empire for a little freedom to breathe in this wicked old universe was my take on this fast-paced (these scit-adventures always are), super-special efforts heavy (ditto) and sometimes ironic and humorous film.

The train of thought that went into this film goes something like this-a super scientist and expert bomb-maker is “kidnapped” by the evil empire (you know Darth Vadar-land a bad guy we haven’t seen for a while in this series since he was wasted back in the day) to make a doomsday bomb that will allow them to expand the empire unto the extremes of the big bang theory. Manifest Destiny let’s call it. More power and dough for the military, okay. That bomb-maker had a daughter, Jyn, played by Felicity Jones who escaped with the “force”.

Fifteen years later serious rumors are circulating among the small bands of rebels of various political and strategic concepts that the evil empire had perfected a super-weapon that would put paid to any rebellion that might pop up. And up pops Jyn (remember with the “force” so this is a shoo-in for victory when the deal goes down as we all know from the other films in the never-ending series) who is the “hook” to get to her father and find out what is what with the weapon. She is “accompanied” by a swash-buckling rebel pilot, Andor, played by Diego Luna, who has a secret mission to kill her father (and extinguish any romantic interest which you know down the road is going to happen from the first glances at each other).  

Eventually after twenty-seven action scenes where everybody, all the good people show their martial arts and sharp-shooter skills, they get to the father, who is killed along the way after confessing to the evil scientist who administers the bomb program that he had sent messages to the rebels about the weapon. The message that he sent to his daughter was that he had created the weapon with a built-in flaw. Find the flaw in the system and the evil empire is back to just a super-power without teeth. After about twenty-eight action scenes where everybody, all the good people once again, show their martial skills against the hapless soldiers of the evil empire which makes me wonder how they were able to create the empire in the first place they destroy the super-weapon and head for home knowing there will still be battles ahead to bring the evil empire down. As always a great entertainment and a nice cautionary tale as well, intentional or not.