Revolt is a sci fi subversive Tears of the Sun that fixes everything wrong with Independence Day 2 and District 9, takes the strongest elements of Alien Outpost and The Recall, a dash of Skyline aesthetic, and gives us an ending that rewards us for hanging on during the early problematic moments. Lee Pace plays a soldier with amnesia who wakes up in a jail with a hot woman doctor in the next cell. He has awoken in the middle of a battle, but the antagonists are the mystery. He thinks that if he just returns to his base, he will be able to find out who he is and fight this strange new threat that seems alien.
In the beginning of Revolt, I’m not going to lie, but I felt some kind of way that all the bad guys are Africans and barbaric. They are not about the greater good, but are still more concerned with maintaining the rigid groups that they were a part of before the conflict, not a broader ideal of humanity. We know the Great White Hope trope, and the first hour seems to play into our expectations. Then things get a little kooky when a British photojournalist believes that God has made the doctor and the soldier cross his path as he reminds them of the strength of the human spirit, specifically David and Goliath using the current conflict’s imagery, indicating that the real hero is some random black person facing down a giant drone/machine. Just when the impossible white man is about to get the girl, Revolt just says no to the tropes and flips everything upside down. He will not be reuniting with the Americans who are going to save Earth from an alien invasion. He does not get a love interest. He is not the hero. They dress him like Moses or a Masai warrior for him to wander in the wilderness at the lowest point since he woke up. After one hour, things get interesting.
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An alien invasion becomes a metaphor for how American peacekeeping is part of the problem, not a solution. He finally has an epiphany that he is an unwitting mole for the aliens and is putting everyone in danger. Instead of being doomed to a life isolated from human contact, a pariah, he is offered redemption by accepting that he is part of the problem, and he submits to following the lead of the people that he came to save, the normal local Kenyans! The people with a plan to save the world are ordinary black men and women. I was hella hyped to see ordinary black women of all fitness levels fighting the machines. The genius scientist is not Jeff Goldblum, but some random genius black guy named Roderick. Rods have been saving a lot of lives in 2017 (Get Out)! The chemistry and unspoken teamwork between Rod and Bo was superb. They discuss China, America and Europe, not a specific country in Europe, which is how movies normally describe Africa.
Revolt changes the mission statement by transforming the peacekeeper: stripping him of his image of himself (as the hero, the guy who gets the girl, the leader of the resistance who knows what to do and who should lead), showing him his actual place in the world, having him accept it and then turning the tools of the oppressor against the oppressor in service of the people. If he had met these good, normal people earlier, he would not have been able to help because he would not have seen them as individuals or been able to honestly admit that he was part of the problem. Note how he acts when he witnesses the father and the little girl in jeopardy. It is completely understandable to hide in the face of an enormous threat, but it also indicates that he was not invested in their welfare as much as the doctor, which is understandable since she is the first person that he ever met, and she is a hot, kickass chick, or the photojournalist, which is less understandable except they’re all foreigners. He initially only helps people who are like him even though he is ostensibly in a foreign country to do just that—help people who are not like him. It is only after he accepts responsibility and complicity in the conflict that he can engage fully with the people that he claimed to come and help, see them as equals and defer to them instead of trying to dominate them.
Revolt gets the Bushwick award for hopes of getting a franchise and emotional catharsis as black people save the world with a white ally using his privilege, which has also victimized him, as a way to dismantle destructive systems. The last ten minutes of the movie were so good that I ended up rewinding and watching the last half hour a couple of times. Pace is hot and needs to get more work. For those of you who found the first hour intolerable and peaced out too early, finish the movie for an exciting twist that disrupts our lowered expectations from the genre.