I Declare War

Borrowing heavily from Louis Pergaud's 1912 novel The War of the Buttons and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson's combat tale means well, but makes too many strategic errors to convince or impress. The story turns around a game of Capture the Flag being played in the woods by two armies of 13 year-olds. Geeky Gage Munroe is a tactical genius who has never been defeated, but when hefty Michael Friend ousts rival commander Aidan Gouveia and starts dispensing with the rules, Munroe is forced to choose whether he cares more about his unbeaten record or his tortured buddy, Siam Yu. Periodically replacing the sticks and toy guns with real weapons to convey the intensity with which the teenagers play at war, the co-directors audaciously present their characters as sadistic, sexist, racist homophobes. However, the quality of the performances is extremely varied and some of the treatment meted out to Yu and the only girl (Mackenzie Munro) feels calculatingly provocative. Indeed, one is left wondering quite what Lapeyre and Wilson hoped to say other than violence begets savagery.