Jon Wright follows his enjoyable Irish monster movie Grabbers with what looks like a Children’s Film Foundation offering updated for the JJ Abrams era: we now get better VFX, lashings of lens flare and Roy Hudd as a kindly grandpa. The battlelines between the robots oppressing a Manx backwater and school marm Gillian Anderson’s rebellious charges are economically established; only during the second-act runaround does it seem a little underpowered when set against its American competition. Still, it’s brisk enough, and Wright’s fondness for types sustains it: there are well-judged contributions from Ben Kingsley as a snippy collaborator, and Tamer Hassan as the guvnor of a pub in permanent lockdown. The film is never less than amiable, and rather more spirited and nonconformist than the Transformers movies: the strategic deployment of a second world war Spitfire suggests this one may hold symbolic value for our newly confident industry.
