Echo Boomers

This crime drama seems to want to tap into generational anxieties and provide an intoxicating release, but instead it plays like a pale, dull copy of many other movies, with blandly recycled themes. Echo Boomers -- the title refers to the millennial generation, who are often the children of baby boomers -- is structured with wraparound sequences, showing several of the gang members telling their stories from jail and Lance being interviewed by an author (Lesley Ann Warren). While this is supposed to give the movie an epic perspective, it only serves to thin the action, especially given the author's silly questions. Noisy, jackhammer editing also doesn't help.

When telling its story, Echo Boomers definitely tries to "echo" movies like Trainspotting, Fight Club, and Spring Breakers, but it lacks their ability to evoke total abandon and release. The scenes of destruction inside the expensive homes are effectively art-directed, and they can be somewhat mesmerizing, but the scenes showing the characters at work just feel routine. It probably doesn't help that the supposedly charismatic leader played by Pettyfer doesn't come anywhere close to anything like Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden; he mostly sulks and barks orders. That said, the screen does spark to life whenever Shannon turns up; his threatening, cunning Mel is truly terrifying.