Review: Kin

Merging elements of sci-fi mystery, road trip, family drama, crime thriller, and superhero origin story, Kin is an expansion of the well-received 2014 short "Bag Man" by brothers Jonathan and Josh Baker, here making an assured and auspicious directorial debut.

Fourteen-year-old Eli (Myles Truitt) lives in a rough and desolate Detroit neighbourhood with his adoptive father, Hal (Dennis Quaid), a gruff but loving man doing his best to raise Eli in the wake of his wife's death. Hal's biological son, the recently paroled Jimmy (Jack Reynor), has returned home and tensions have been resurrected, especially since Jimmy is $60,000 in debt to local crime boss Taylor (James Franco in over-the-top mode), who definitely wants his money back or else.

Things come to a head when Hal catches Jimmy, Taylor and some of Taylor's men breaking into his company safe. Hal is killed, so is Taylor's brother, and Jimmy absconds with the $60,000 in cash. Not wanting to raise any alarms with Eli, Jimmy tells him that Hal has been called away on a work emergency and will meet them at their late mother's favourite cabin in Tahoe. The brothers embark on a road trip with Taylor and his gang in hot pursuit. Oh, and Eli happens to be in possession of a futuristic automatic weapon he found in an abandoned building site whilst scavenging for copper wiring to sell for money. The space travellers want their weapon back and are also tracking the brothers' whereabouts.

Recalling the lo-fi, retro-futuristic stylings of Super 8 and Midnight Special, Kin does well to avoid any sentimental pitfalls in favour of a character-driven narrative. The Bakers engage the eye with compositions featuring settings that often have an unsettling feel, and the action sequences display a flair for staging, though not necessarily spectacle. Truitt does well to convey Eli's lonely state, but he is outshone by Reynor and Zoë Kravitz, the latter providing both feistiness and warmth as a maternal figure for Eli whilst the former's easygoing charm suggests he may have made for an ideal Han Solo in the recent Solo film.

Kin

Directed by: Jonathan Baker, Josh Baker

Written by: Jonathan Baker, Josh Baker, Daniel Casey

Starring: Myles Truitt, Jack Reynor, Zoë Kravitz, Carrie Coon, Dennis Quaid, James Franco, Michael B. Jordan