I like the post apocalyptic genre. A lot of decent movies out there, and a few great ones.
This isn't one of those.
The plot is pretty standard fare: A once good man has become (at best) morally ambiguous loner, for a reason the film hints at, but doesn't quite reveal. He has a chance at redemption when he encounters a young girl who needs help.
The script is choppy and hammy. Most of the film is spent trudging through the snow, which would be okay, if the story was more convincing and the trudging somehow lent gravitas to the moral journey. But neither the script nor the plot convey the lesson very well.
The acting is wooden, across the board. Silly accents. Stiff delivery of lines.
Action sequences are poorly executed. Implausible, with bad editing thrown in, to cement the poor and unrealistic feeling of the scenes.
In one scene, two bad women on confront the young girl and her mom. One of the bad women shoots the mom. A moment later, the protagonist, unseen, shoots one of the bad women. The other bad women continues walking to grab the young girl, as if a rifle shot never happened, and there is no threat to her life. A moment later, she is shot dead.
There are several sequences like that. It's disjointed and disconnected from any kind of plausible realism. People, even hardened people, react to gunshots; rifles are REALLY loud. Human fight or flight instinct doesn't allow for casually continuing what you are doing when it is readily apparent you are about to be killed or maimed. Without fail, reflex reaction is to run, or turn to face the threat.
In the film, every encounter between people in the wilderness is life or death, or implies that it could be. And yet the protagonist makes campfires at night. NOBODY walking around the outdoors in an environment where encounters with others are likely to be fatally violent would make a nighttime campfire. It's like a neon sign saying "I'm here. Come kill me and take my stuff."
The filmmaker wants to tell a redemption tale set in a rugged, survivalist environment, but doesn't seem to understand humans in that setting.
I have no doubt, budget limitations contributed to this mess. There were sequences of glaring omission, where another handful of seconds of film, with a different perspective edited in, would have made a scene flow correctly.
20 minutes in, wanted to bail on this movie. I forced myself to get through it, knowing I had to write a review, to counter the fluff reviews that convinced me to watch this in the first place.
Nothing in the remaining 60 minutes was redeeming. In fact, it got worse.
Can't recommend this movie at all.
This isn't one of those.
The plot is pretty standard fare: A once good man has become (at best) morally ambiguous loner, for a reason the film hints at, but doesn't quite reveal. He has a chance at redemption when he encounters a young girl who needs help.
The script is choppy and hammy. Most of the film is spent trudging through the snow, which would be okay, if the story was more convincing and the trudging somehow lent gravitas to the moral journey. But neither the script nor the plot convey the lesson very well.
The acting is wooden, across the board. Silly accents. Stiff delivery of lines.
Action sequences are poorly executed. Implausible, with bad editing thrown in, to cement the poor and unrealistic feeling of the scenes.
In one scene, two bad women on confront the young girl and her mom. One of the bad women shoots the mom. A moment later, the protagonist, unseen, shoots one of the bad women. The other bad women continues walking to grab the young girl, as if a rifle shot never happened, and there is no threat to her life. A moment later, she is shot dead.
There are several sequences like that. It's disjointed and disconnected from any kind of plausible realism. People, even hardened people, react to gunshots; rifles are REALLY loud. Human fight or flight instinct doesn't allow for casually continuing what you are doing when it is readily apparent you are about to be killed or maimed. Without fail, reflex reaction is to run, or turn to face the threat.
In the film, every encounter between people in the wilderness is life or death, or implies that it could be. And yet the protagonist makes campfires at night. NOBODY walking around the outdoors in an environment where encounters with others are likely to be fatally violent would make a nighttime campfire. It's like a neon sign saying "I'm here. Come kill me and take my stuff."
The filmmaker wants to tell a redemption tale set in a rugged, survivalist environment, but doesn't seem to understand humans in that setting.
I have no doubt, budget limitations contributed to this mess. There were sequences of glaring omission, where another handful of seconds of film, with a different perspective edited in, would have made a scene flow correctly.
20 minutes in, wanted to bail on this movie. I forced myself to get through it, knowing I had to write a review, to counter the fluff reviews that convinced me to watch this in the first place.
Nothing in the remaining 60 minutes was redeeming. In fact, it got worse.
Can't recommend this movie at all.