It’s that time of the year again when light sabers are dusted off and the quotes of “Movie goer, you will be” surface as Disney throws one of the more recently acquired money making franchises into the mix and the Star Wars phenomenon is unleashed once more. This time there is a little more intrigue as the regular series takes a break and we are given a spin off movie set between the events of Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope.

So instead of the usual story line around Jedi and the Skywalker family we are given a glance both st behind the rebellion and the inner working of the Empire as we see how they came to develop their super-weapon, the Death Star. Following the story line of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) who as a child watches her family being taken from her by head of the Empires division of weapons development, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), although she escapes capture at the time and is raised by friend of the family, and Clone War veteran Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).

As the plot moves forward Jyn is rescued from prison by rebel officer Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as the rebels believe that her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) is helping the Empire develop a new super weapon. Given that she thought her father dead, Jyn accepts the chance to assist the rebels for the potential to see her father once again and also prove them wrong as she does not believe he would help the Empire however, the fact that she is Galen’s daughter leaves many members of the rebellion unsure as to Jyn’s motivations. During the course of this investigation it is revealed that this super weapon may have a design flaw and when the Empire shows the power behind the weapon it has produced by destroying a city the Rebels realise they need to take drastic measures however there is a reluctance from their leaders to throw their weight behind a Hail Mary type attack on the Imperial Garrison which leads to the small group of Jyn, Cassian, his reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), defected Empire pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), spiritual blind warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and his friend Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) along with a small group of rebels taking it upon themselves to make an attempt to steal the plans for the Death Star to see if this flaw is fact or fiction.

The film does suffer some setbacks. There’s a feel of The Magnificent Seven about the small band of fighters, most of whom have done bad in the past, going against the odds to find redemption and try to save the day so, despite the setting change, the story lacks originality. There’s a very, very slow start, full of planet hopping which tries to develop the characters, give them motivation and lead up to the main storyline and action but I thought they missed the boat a little in that case as I still feel the motivation for a lot of the characters was weak and in trying to bring us heavy action sequences it lost some of its heart so the balance and feel of the movie was off. Forest Whittaker’s character was very under used considering the potential pivotal role he could have been. K-2SO, despite being brilliantly voiced by Tudyk, is a C3PO knock off with a more sarcastic sense of humour and the best character in the movie, Chirrut, isn’t given anywhere enough screen time.

Despite my criticisms there are a lot of good things about the film. Even though it is set in the vastness of space the movie felt compact as it stayed focused of a small group of characters, Vader’s appearances were brief but were done very well and ensured that the movie kept its feel as a spin off, the last third was excellent and felt like the movie A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back could have been if the technology was available at that time, the CGI was very good, the introduction of some characters from other movies was done very well and didn’t feel cheap and the lead into the start of A New Hope was almost faultless which deserves an awful lot of credit.

Fans of the series will enjoy the film, casual movie goers will be entertained and Disney will make a stackfull of cash so it looks like everyone is a winner but despite the highs the movie has it didn’t hit me the same way last year The Force Awakens did so I was left feeling a little empty which was disappointing, but if we learned one thing as a movie going audience this year it’s that high expectation has lead to inevitable disappointment.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6.5 Out Of 10