Tag: wilderness

Deep Fear

  By

★★
“Shallow entertainment”

Naomi (Ghenea) is sailing a schooner single-handed in the Caribbean, returning it from Antigua to Grenada so it’ll be ready for a charter customer to take out. Her boyfriend, Jackson (Westwick) has already gone ahead to prepare things there. But a squall diverts Naomi off course, and she then stumbles across boat wreckage to which Maria (Gómez) and Jose (Coppet) are desperately clinging. They tell her there’s still a survivor trapped on the sea bottom, and Naomi dives down to rescue Tomas from his watery tomb. However, on returning to the surface with him, she gets a nasty surprise and finds her work is not over. For the survivors were also transporting 200 kg of cocaine.

Naomi is now key to salvaging it, whether she wants to be or not. Complicating matters is the presence of a large, predatory shark prowling the area, which makes simply going up and down from the sea bottom a perilous endeavour. Especially after one such encounter, where we get the immortal line, “The shark bit into the bags and now the shark is probably high on cocaine.” Sadly, hopes that this was going to become a sequel to Cocaine Bear never materialized [there is a film out there called Cocaine Shark, but it’s so bad, even a hardened connoisseur of badfilm like I, couldn’t get through the trailer] . Instead, there’s just an awful lot of sub-aqua shenanigans, and there’s really only so much SCUBA-ing I can take.

I will say, it all looks lovely. Malta actually stood in for the Caribbean, and if you’re looking for a picturesque tourist destination, combining beautiful scenery with clear water, it seems a good bet. However, as a thriller, it’s distinctly lacking in thrills, whether it’s a shark whose diet seems exclusively to consist of the bad people, through a cast for whom English is not their native tongue in many cases, to a heroine whose lips appear recently to have encountered a swarm of wasps [I note Ghenea’s credit in Zoolaander 2 as “Hot Shepherdess”]. The pacing is also off, especially early, when irrelevancies like Naomi and Jackson renting an apartment show up, serving no apparent purpose except delaying her arrival on the scene.

Gómez, whom you might remember from SexyKiller, is likely the best element the film has to offer, switching from cowering victim to manipulative sociopath. For instance, Maria conceals her nautical skills because if Naomi realizes she’s surplus to requirements after bringing up the coke, she might not be willing to do so. That kind of smarts is something the film needs to have more, ideally replacing the apparently endless amounts of moist mischief. I did like how the shark attacks don’t hold back on the blood, something you don’t see often. However, the creature rarely feels more than a toothy plot-device, thrown into scenes whenever the film-makers run out of other ways to generate tension. And that is far too often, to be honest.

Dir: Marcus Adams
Star: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Stany Coppet

The File, by Gary Born

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Not many novels come with a ringing endorsement from a former director of the CIA, but Gina Haspel calls this “A thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing thriller.” Argue with her, and she’ll send you an exploding cigar, or something. While it certainly isn’t bad, the rating above reflects its likely moderate appeal for readers here. A general audience might be more impressed, especially with regard to the second half, where the heroine becomes more of a passenger. Things begin at the very end of World War II with a flight out of Berlin carrying documents intended to secure the future of the Reich. It doesn’t reach its destination, crashing in the depths of the African jungle.

Almost eighty years later, a botanical expedition stumbles across the downed plane and its cargo. When word seeps out, various very interested parties converge on the Congo, intent on securing the contents by any means necessary. Surviving the initial onslaught is Sara West, daughter of the expedition’s head, who bails with the documents, and the parties in hot pursuit. In the jungle at least, Sara has more experience and proves eminently capable of turning the tables on her pursuers. After escaping the wilderness, she convinces one of the hunters, CIA agent Jeb Fisher, to change sides, and his assistance becomes increasingly valuable as they head through Africa, into Italy, and eventually to Zurich. There, they make a final stand, in the unlikely location of a venerable Swiss bank.

The above should hopefully explain why this feels like a book of two halves. I really enjoyed the first half, with Sara using all her knowledge, built on years of living in the jungle, to stay one step ahead of the opposition – or sneak up from behind on them. She rarely over-powers her enemies, relying more on stealth, wits and turning their own resources against them. It is still a bit of a stretch to imagine a young woman, untrained in combat, taking out a whole slew of Russian special forces. However, Born certainly sells the illusion well enough to work. The problems arise with the arrival of Jeb, not least the ease with which he disobeys orders to take Sara’s side.

Thereafter, he also becomes the main protagonist. While it makes sense that his skills would become more important outside of the jungle, it results in Sara being somewhat (though not entirely) sidelined. There’s also the almost inevitable romantic dalliance, and I feel that having a Jebina instead of Jeb, might have addressed that, and a lot of the problems I felt hampered the second half. It’s still a decent enough read on its own terms, building nicely towards the grandstand finale – although I can’t imagine even Swiss authorities taking so long to get to a hellacious firefight in downtown Zurich! But I feel it does not do Sara the justice she deserves, especially after the impressive heights reached earlier on.

Author: Gary Born
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel

The Dive

  By

★★
“Breaking bad.”

This is an English language remake of Breaking Surface, a 2020 film from Sweden. It is also a sterling demonstration of what happens when you do not follow the Golden Rule of Remakes. “Only remake a film if you can improve on the original.” The first red flag here is the quick turnaround, just three years after the original. It’s clear that the idea here is simply to copy the film, for an English language audience who don’t want to read subtitles. We’ve seen this kind of thing before, when Nikita was turned into Point of No Return, also three years later. There, as here, the remake is entirely superfluous if you’re familiar with the original, and does not fare well in any comparison. 

As you’d expect, the basic story is the same. Sisters Drew (Lowe) and May (Krause) have drifted apart over the years. But a shared passion for diving brings them back together for a trip on a remote stretch of coastline, to explore an underwater cave system. Initially, it goes well, until a rock slide leaves May with her leg pinned at the bottom of the sea. Her oxygen running out, it’s up to Drew to return to the surface, call for help, and bring down fresh tanks to keep her sister breathing. Naturally, it’s not as simple as that, with Drew having to overcome a slew of obstacles, from a car boot that won’t open, to equipment that malfunctions.

I’m quite hard-pushed to work out specifically why this had more or less the same ingredients as Breaking Surface, yet is so much less effective. It just feels like each element is a third- or fourth-generation photocopy of the original. The sisters, for example, are less appealing. There’s the same dynamic, in that May is the calm and collected one, while Drew is not suited to handling a crisis. But May comes off almost as robotic, while Drew is shrill and aggravating. There’s also a similar back story, involving a childhood incident. Here though, it seems to get in the way of the main plot, rather than enhancing it, with useful or interesting background. It sometimes feels like you need to know diving stuff too, and I don’t. 

To be fair, if I hadn’t seen the original, this would certainly score higher, perhaps around three stars. It’s still a good scenario, and I did like some elements, like the pointed note the sisters’ car is a rental. I just hope they got the damage waiver. But most of the changes, such as swapping out the chilliness of a Scandinavian fjord for the warmth of the Mediterranean (Malta, to be precise), seem pointless at best, and a detriment more often than not. By the end, which seems significantly more contrived in the original, I had an overwhelming urge to run off and watch Breaking Surface again. Though it did reaffirm my beliefs that caving = nope, diving = nope, and cave-diving = nope squared.

Dir: Maximilian Erlenwein
Star: Louisa Krause, Sophie Lowe

Av: The Hunt

  By

★½
“Puts the turkey in Turkish cinema”

The palpable sense of disappointment I felt when the end credits rolled, was all the more striking, given the decent way this opened. Ayse (Koç) is enjoying a shower after some afternoon delight with her lover, when there’s a thunderous knocking on the door. It’s her thoroughly disgruntled ex-husband. In the resulting fracas, the boyfriend is shot dead, and Ayse has to leap out of a window, and go on the run. Friends and family disown her, as the ancient concept of the honour killing still holds sway in contemporary Turkey. She can’t even go to the authorities, since the ex-husband is a policeman. 

Ayse attempts to head to the big city of Istanbul, more secular and offering a chance to hide out. This plan is derailed when a routine traffic stop leads to her capture. She manages to steal a police car, thanks to the cops underestimating her – you’ll find that is a bit of a theme. However, it crashes in fog and she’s forced on the run again, this time into the wilderness of the forest. She is pursued there by her former husband and various relatives, including a teenage cousin. They feel, to varying degrees that her actions have brought shame upon their family, and that she must pay for that, with her blood. Ayse, has other plans, especially after she wrests a weapon from one of the hunters. 

It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen quite often before: a woman being chased through the wilderness, before turning the tables on them. When done properly, it can be highly effective. Examples of the proper execution – pun intended – would include Revenge or Arisaka. This, on the other hand, manages to get just about everything wrong. Part of it may be down to an overseas audience not being aware of the honour concepts, something the makers here don’t bother to explain. That’s forgivable. After all, it wasn’t made for us. But there are any number of other flaws, such as the ease with which she can best everyone in hand-to-hand combat. Or the lengthy, almost entirely pointless scene where Ayse tries to bribe a bus-driver to take her to Istanbul. 

These pale entirely beside the ending, which is solely responsible for losing the film an entire star. For, in general, it looks decent, with some impressive cinematography, such as the drone shot that follows Ayse as she’s fleeing the apartment, and pans up to reveal the city. Despite its flaws, we were probably looking at ★★½. And then, we weren’t. I do not know what the director was trying to say with the ending. If I had to guess, something like “I have no idea how to wrap things up, and frankly, am getting bored with the entire endeavour, so I’m just going to roll the credits.” Almost makes me want to recommend watching this, purely for how bad the finish is. There’s certainly not much else to justify the experience. 

Dir: Emre Akay
Star: Billur Melis Koç, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Yagiz Can Konyali, Adam Bay

Dangerous Waters

  By

★★
“Dangerously stupid.”

This was Ray Liotta’s last movie: he died during shooting. Cruel though it may be, I can’t help wondering if he died of embarrassment. Certainly, I note that his character never gets a proper send-off: while I must remain vague for spoiler purposes, you don’t see his face. Not that he’s in this much. A rambling conversation with the heroine is the bulk of it. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. We begin with single mom Alma (Burrows) dragging unwilling teen daughter Rose (Rush) on a sailing trip from Florida to Barbados. The boat belongs to her new boyfriend, ex-cop Derek (Dane), and at first, things are pleasant, despite Rose’s obvious desire to be anywhere else but on the high seas.

She’s right to be concerned. A mysterious encounter in the middle of the night leaves one of the passengers dead, and the other two having to fend for themselves, on a badly crippled craft. Turns out, Derek wasn’t quite the above board law enforcement officer Alma thought. He was in cahoots with some very nasty people, in particular one individual known only as The Captain (Liotta). Surviving will require Rose to get on a liferaft, go to a desert island, get back on the liferaft, and finally get picked up by the boat belonging to The Captain. Fortunately, she is both the daughter of a deceased soldier, and has taken shooting lessons. Who better to take out a ship full of hardened criminals?

Yeah, that whirring sound are my eyes rolling. It’s all pretty dumb and largely implausible. I’m not sure what’s less credible: Rush as a teenager, or Burrows as a woman in her late thirties [Put it this way: I’d like to wish a happy 25th birthday in July to Saffron’s performance in Deep Blue Sea] Then there’s the plot, which wanders round in circles aimlessly, between sporadic bouts of action. I guess it gives the viewer plenty of time to try and figure out what Derek’s plan was supposed to be. Similarly, Rose swings between being an unbeatable bad-ass, and whimpering in the corner or unable to hold an oar. But since the movie opens with Rose telling her story to law enforcement, there’s no tension or threat to her. We know she’s going to survive. 

I will say, it looks slick, and the action is fairly well-staged, especially once we get to the boat. This is certainly watchable, though I almost dozed off during one of the longer liferaft sequences. It’s the story that’s the problem here, not least because the big surprises are little or no surprise at all. Maybe the unscheduled loss of Liotta, and the obvious rewrite required was a factor. However, that tragedy can only go so far in explaining the welter of problems with the story. It’s the kind of thing which might pass muster as a TV movie on a lower-tier cable channel. I was expecting more, and certainly, Liotta deserves better as a memorial. 

Dir: John Barr
Star: Odeya Rush, Eric Dane, Saffron Burrows, Ray Liotta

The Marsh King’s Daughter

  By

★★½
“Always protect your family.”

This begins with the young Helena, living deep in the woods with her mother and father, Jacob (Mendelsohn). He’s teaching her the ways of the forest, including hunting and the need to be ruthless, with the top priority expressed in the tagline above. However, things aren’t quite what they seem: it feels like it could be a century ago, yet the tranquil illusion is shattered when a lost stranger on an ATV rides up. Mom makes a break for freedom with Helena, for it seems this is actually a kidnapping which has gone on for a long time. Fast forward twenty years: Jacob is in prison, mom killed herself and Helena (Ridley) is working a dead-end job, but married to Stephen (Hedlund), and with a daughter, Marigold.

Then Jacob escapes custody while being transferred, and all hell breaks loose. For Helena has changed her identity, in an effort to disconnect from her past. Stephen is entirely unaware of his wife’s history, until the authorities show up on their doorstep. Helena is naturally concerned that her father is going to make contact, or worse. Inevitably, that’s exactly what happens, and she is going to have to dredge up those long-abandoned skills in order to live up to the standards ingrained in her, when she was living in the woods. It will also require her to return to her childhood haunt, for a confrontation with Jacob which has been several decades in the making.

I suspect the main problem is that we know where it’s going to go, almost from the moment we are told Jacob has broken out of jail. The film, however, insists on dallying around, having Helena’s paranoia ramp up in a middle act that loses all momentum, creeping around at night and hearing the flute-like music which her father used to play. Does this indicate he is near, or simply that the stress is triggering some kind of psychotic episode? To be honest, we don’t particularly care. I kinda lost much sympathy for her, after realizing she had hidden everything from Stephen. You’d think the fact she has more tats than a Maori chieftain might clue you in to something of a checkered past, but that’s apparently just me.

Still, Jacob looms over the entire film even when he is not physically present, since he has, understandably, been living rent-free in his daughter’s head. There is a seasoning of Stockholm syndrome here, in the way the father has impressed his personality on his daughter. Yet none of it is particularly engaging. We’re left just waiting for the face-off which we know is inevitable, where Helena has to decide how far she is willing to go, in order to protect Marigold. Is that further than Jacob is prepared to go, for what he believes is the best interests of his daughter? I feel the answer to that question should be more interesting than this bland exercise in wilderness abuse ends up becoming.

Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Gil Birmingham, Garrett Hedlund

Cascade

  By

★★
“Falls off.”

It’s kinda interesting to compare this to Mercy Falls. Both concern an ill-fated trip into a scenic wilderness – all trees and waterfalls – by a group of friends, which goes increasingly off the rails. The main difference is, in Mercy, the call was coming from inside the house, as it were. Here, the threat is definitely external. The target is four friends, just finished high school and about to enter the world at large. Jesse (Oulette) will work as a mechanic; his girlfriend Alex (Waisglass) wants to leave their small town and go to college, but hasn’t plucked up the courage to tell Jesse yet. Making matters more complex, her father is part of the Dark Saints, a biker gang and generally criminal enterprise. 

This matters, because the Dark Saints just lost a shipment of drugs, the plane carrying it having crashed in a remote region of a nearby national park. Their minions are on the hunt for it, but – what are the odds? – Alex and her friends are first to stumble across it. A discussion ensues about what to do, but it’s all rendered moot after they cross paths with the minions. Before you can say, “implausible plot line,” Jesse has broken his leg and he, plus another of the quartet, pregnant pal Em (Laflamme-Snow) have been captured by the bad guys. It’s up to Alex to figure out what to do, as the only member of the group left able to operate freely.

Which is fortunate, since she’s also the smartest of the people wandering in the woods, and it’s not even close. Let’s just say, pond life would likely rate second or third place among these people, and I’m including both the hikers and the minions in those rankings. Seeing her mental wheels spinning as she out-thinks and outmanoeuvres her enemies is one of the few pleasures this offers. But it’s like watching a grand master playing chess against a pigeon. The only genuine and credible threat is her Dad and the Dark Saints, and they don’t show up until the very end of proceedings. With Alex’s witless friends, dumb and/or unlikable, the ones in peril, the stakes here aren’t enough to engage the viewer either. 

I will say, the film does look half-decent, with Diego Guijarro’s cinematography popping nicely off the screen, and the Canadian backdrop is scenic. But too often, the film pulls its punches, whether it’s a character leaping off the waterfalls, depicted with them simply vanishing out of sight, or a pivotal car crash in which it appears no vehicles were actually harmed. This might as well be a TVM, with only the potty-mouths of some inhabitants meriting more than a PG rating. It’s all blandly innocuous, and despite Waisglass’s best efforts, it never gels. Things like Em’s pregnancy, for instance, feel like an afterthought, which goes nowhere and seems like nothing more than a cheap ploy to get audience sympathy. Memo to the film-makers: it didn’t work. 

Dir: Egidio Coccimiglio
Star: Sara Waisglass, Joel Oulette, Sadie Laflamme-Snow

Snowbound

  By

★★
“Snow up to much…”

Though not formally listed on the IMDb as a made for television movie, it has all the hallmarks of one, down to what look suspiciously like pauses into which commercial breaks could be inserted. It’s the story of work colleagues, Liz Bartlett (Schnarre) and Barbara Tate (Eleniak). The former is attacked in the company’s parking garage one night, and confesses to her friend that her former husband is stalking her. She fears for her life, having helped put him behind bars. So what is the most sensible thing for the pair to do in these circumstances? If your answer is, “Head off to a remote mountain cabin, in the middle on an impending blizzard”, give yourself two points.

Unsurprisingly, this does not work out well, and you can more or less tell where this is going, from the moment when the cabin’s host says “The owner was very specific about this: do not go into the gun cabinet, it’s in the lease.” Liz and Barbara will be getting a two-star review on their profile, because you should not be in the slightest bit shocked to hear, they do end up going into the gun cabinet. For it’s not long before sketchy characters start harassing Barbara in town, and we also learn that Liz was considerably less than forthcoming with the truth to her supposed BFF. This isn’t a surprise – at least, to the viewer – since we had previously seen her take a case of “camera equipment” on the trip, which we know actually contains a gun and a large amount of cash.

It’s all very much by the numbers, the overall vanilla flavour not helped by two leads who manage to look somewhat pretty, while creating almost nothing approaching memorable characters. Heck, I’d have settled for a depth roughly approximating the alleged snowfall. I say “alleged”, since considering there’s a supposed blizzard in action, sealing them off from the rest of civilization, I’m not sure I actually saw a single flake fall from the sky over the duration of the entire movie. It takes about an hour for Barbara to catch up to what we the audience already knows, and for the ex-husband to appear at the cabin.

Things do get at least somewhat interesting thereafter, with Barbara being forced into steps significantly outside of her comfort zone, in order to stay alive from those in pursuit of her. She’s helped by the fact that the pursuer may not exactly be the sharpest tool in the box, and engages in acts which certainly end up back-firing on them. It’s still all low-impact stuff generally, and not enough to distract you from Eleniak’s resemblance here to a slightly less wholesome version of Meg Ryan. Don’t expect anything along “those” lines either; again, I strongly suspect this was intended for Lifetime, rather than late-night on Cinemax. I’ve already forgotten about it, and feel no great sense of loss thereof.

Dir: Ruben Preuss
Star: Erika Eleniak, Monika Schnarre, Peter Dobson, Bill Mondy

Red Winter

  By

★½
“Snow good at all.”

Carla (Williams) and her boyfriend Daniel (Davis) are all set for a nice weekend in the mountains. Unfortunately, the snowmobile trip runs into difficulty, in particular coming in the shape of a pair of cartel assassins. What, you may ask, are a pair of cartel assassins doing half-way up a snowy mountain in [I’m guessing] the Colorado Rockies? Good question. I’m glad you asked. They are after a robber who made the ill-advised decision to rob a bar which was a front for their organization. He’s now hiding out, half-way up the aforementioned snowy mountain, in the belief he’s safe. Turns out not to be the case.

There’s a prologue which takes us back to when Carla was young, and was out hunting in the woods with her father. They wound a stag, and as they stand and watch it bleed out, we get ominous lines like, “Because when they’re fighting for their lives, sweet pea, they can be dangerous.” Just in case you missed the importance of this, we flash back to this flashback on repeated occasions during the movie. Because, it’s clearly Very Important. Except, it really isn’t. What it does, however, is help to drag things out before we get anything approaching action. It’s mostly people trudging around a mountainous landscape, very slowly, because one of the party has an injured ankle. This occupies much of the first fifty minutes – and we barely reach seventy before the end credits roll.

Carla is, above everything else, a very sensible heroine. She’s quite likeable as such, and comes over as smart, albeit cautious. The problem is, she simply does not get enough to do. These unrealistic expectations were based on a synopsis which reads, “With the killers stalking them through the bitter cold, Carla must use her survival skills taught to her by her father to ensure she’s the predator and not the prey in this bloody fight for survival.” The reality is something far less interesting, in that those skills are largely limited to her binding that ankle mentioned previously. This does not make for thrilling television. [It was made for BET, but feels like it would have been more at home on Hallmark, perhaps titled, The Wrong Mountain]

There’s certainly nothing particularly red about this winter. Except for the heroine, there’s nothing of merit or even, to be honest, real competence here. The script is meandering and unfocused, and most of the supporting characters fail to make an impression. A slight pass goes to Dante (Sanchez), the dominant assassin, who does have some presence. However, Daniel in particular is beyond useless. While this might have been deliberate, in an effort to make Carla look strong, it’s a flawed approach. You create a heroine by having her demonstrate strength, not others showing their weakness. That may seem obvious, but it’s apparently a lesson of which the makers here were unaware. Along with quite a number of others.

Dir: Steven C. Pitts
Star: Ashley A. Williams, Vernon Davis, Brandon Schaffer, Roberto Sanchez

Altitudes

  By

★★★
“Climb every mountain…”

I was really surprised to discover that this French film is actually made for television. It has a certain gravitas and thoughtfulness to it, that you rarely find in a genre which is (often rightfully) derided as being formulaic and cliched. This doesn’t escape those criticisms entirely – in particular, there’s a “Disease of the Week” subplot, which does feel as it it might have strayed in from Lifetime or Hallmark. However, even there, it feels handled in a relatively natural manner, rather than being shoehorned in there to elicit sympathy from the viewer. It definitely looks better than most TVMs out of Hollywood. Whether this is down to Félix von Muralt’s cinematography, or simply the stunning Alpine landscapes, is open to debate.

It begins at a funeral. Isabelle Dormann (Borotra) has returned following fifteen years away, after the death of her father, a former mountaineer, who then ran a lodge high in the Alps. This allows her to reconnect with her friend, Kenza (Krey), a world-class climber herself, but also more awkwardly, with Antoine (Stévenin), a man with whom she had a relationship which helped precipitate Isabelle’s sudden departure from the mountains. She decides to honour her father by climbing a new route up Les Roches Brunes, the nearby mountain after which the lodge was called. At 4,357 metres high, it’s the tallest peak in the area, and Isabelle always talked with her father about pioneering a new route up it, to be named for the family.

She and Kenza decide to honour her late father by doing just that. However, it turns out Isabelle is suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, which is slowly but inevitably killing her, making it a race against time before her physical abilities just aren’t there. It seems this is a fight she has lost, as practice sessions don’t go well. Yet after Kenza calls off the attempt, Isabelle decides to strike out on her own for a solo ascent. Kenza and Antoine follow, hoping to save her from herself.

I like films about climbing, when they concentrate on the climbing. Yet, it seems inevitable to tack on personal drama of one kind or another. It’s not enough simply to have one person taking on nature. Too often, they need to have a dead fiance or similar motivation, and the results often tend to resemble bad soap-opera. That’s definitely the case here, with the whole Isabelle-Antoine relationship dramatically overcooked, and muddying the water. The same goes for Isabelle’s condition: she could simply have been not experienced enough to take on the climb. However, when the movie sets such formulaic conceits aside and concentrates on the almost primeval struggle, it’s much more effective. I can’t even dock it significantly for Antoine effectively white-knighting things, since the ending is bittersweet enough to justify it. I think it’s one which will stick in my mind, for longer than it felt it would at the time. 

Dir: Pierre-Antoine Hiroz
Star: Claire Borotra, Déborah Krey, Sagamore Stévenin, Isabelle Caillat
a.k.a. The Climb