Based on the best-selling Dutch novel by Mirjam Mous, BOY 7 is a slick thriller that is both smart and well-paced. The film offers a tantalising view of a near-future police state offering troubled youth a way to make good – not disimilar to the Ludovico treatment in A Clockwork Orange.

A young man wakes up on the subway, his memory lost. Across from him is Lara who tells him his name is Sam. It isn’t long before the authorities arrive and all hell breaks loose. Sam and Lara show off their extraordinary urban combat skills and escape. Later she hands him a journal he apparently gave to her for safekeeping wherein he discovers their shared history of being juvenile offenders with high-level skills. He was a hacker and both had undergone specialist training. Unsurprisingly, all is not as it seems.

Boy 7, as far as speculative cinema goes, is both smart and entertaining as it nimbly meets the bar set by the latest international phenomenon in teen-targeted film and fiction. It’s stylishly tapped in to our plugged-in and digitally-driven culture.