iBoy

A London teenager wakes up with strange new powers in this drama blending social realism and tech fantasy after a shooting leaves fragments of his mobile phone embedded in his brain. Soon geeky Bill Milner finds himself getting online and hacking other people's phones through the sheer power of thought, and he can even conjure up radio waves to zap the villains who tried to kill him and raped his love interest (Maisie Williams). The finer scientific points of how any of this is possible are never actually addressed, which might be less of a problem if the movie was content to offer mere bubble-gum fun. Instead, it tries to get very serious about urban poverty and the lure of the drugs trade, and even if this were the place to discuss such matters, director Adam Randall (adapting Kevin Brooks's novel) has little new to say. What this boils down to is an unusual genre hybrid which needed a lot more work to make any sense; a shame when Williams turns in such a touching, dignified turn as the victim who is battered but unbowed by her experiences.