★★★
“Aileen vs. Predator”
How far Charlize Theron has come. It has been interesting to follow her transition from a clothes-horse to an Oscar-winning actress playing a serial killer in Monster, and then her unexpected turn to become perhaps the leading action heroine of the past decade (despite mis-steps such as Aeon Flux). She’s now in her fifties, so we’ll see how long she keeps going, but for now, I’m happy to enjoy her output. Here, there’s nothing particularly special, but as Netflix Originals go, this is certainly better than Thrash, the mediocre shark movie we also watched this weekend. It fares particularly better on the character side, giving the audience solid performances from both the heroine and the villain.
The former is Sasha (Theron), a rock-climber who lost her husband, Tommy (Bana), after an accident climbing the ‘Troll Wall’ in Norway [a real, three thousand feet high cliff-face]. It’s basically the same opening as Fall. However, things then diverge, as Sasha goes to Australia for a hike into the Wandarra National Park, also involving climbing and a little white-water rafting. Silly girl: doesn’t she know that everything in Australia is trying to kill you? She soon learns this, encountering first a sketchy pair of locals, before meeting Ben (Egerton). Since this element is in the trailer, I don’t feel I need to hide the fact that he is the real threat. He hunts and then captures Sasha, taking her back to his dank cave lair, where…
Yeah, it’s a bit more than being your garden variety psycho, and Egerton plays it to the hilt. Theron, meanwhile, has the necessary skills to fight for her survival, in a way that Ben’s numerous previous victims did not. I’m not sure exactly how much of the work here was performed by Theron. There is clearly some composite work going on, especially with the numerous falls. But I’ve a feeling, from Charlize’s previous efforts, she’ll have done as much as humanly possible, with regard to the climbing and canoeing. Kormákur does a good job of capturing things right from the start, with some queasy cliff-face camerawork, and drone work that really shows off the immense size of the wilderness in which Ben hunts.
It is all rather predictable, but gets by on the charisma of the two leads. Theron manages to look the part, convincing the viewer of her credentials as a climber, in a way much younger actresses struggle to do (hello, Daisy Ridley). Meanwhile, Egerton proves an admirable foil, capable of flicking a switch to go from pitiable to pretty damn scary, in the blink of an eye. There were a couple of points towards the end where I found myself thinking of ways this could have tweaked the formula to better effect. But Netflix is all about meeting the viewers’ expectations, not confounding them. If you’re looking for something entertaining, without any intention of pushing the envelope, this does exactly that: no more, no less.
Dir: Baltasar Kormákur
Star: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana