Big Game (2014)

 

Michael May and his Adventure Blog is one of my favorite sites to read for a number of reasons but none so more than to see his favorite and least favorite movies of the past year. He always introduces me to something new or convinces me to take a chance on something I passed on earlier in the year. I must watch a dozen extra GOOD movies a year just on his recommendations alone. This was one I never knew anything about but I liked the trailer and had to see how Samuel L. Jackson plays The President stuck in such a situation as unlikely as the one in Big Game.

I also like the coming of age story of a boy who lives in the wild and is on his first solo hunt. It's a tradition in his culture to enter the forest and bring back a large animal. He has a lot to prove to his father and when given the chance he either has to step up or be afraid. I know at 13, I could survive for a bit but I would be pooping my pants after about three days in the wilderness.

His father is tough on him but believes in his potential. That would have been enough for any story. Now you add a hunted President in the Lapland wilds of Finland and we got us a high concept film that demands a full retard execution. Does this one do that? You bet it does.

When you add the crashing of Air Force One and a group of terrorists attempting to kidnap and then kill The President, yeh, it's about a goofy as things get and it was exactly what I needed to watch this morning. And I have to give props to the director and cinematographer who found new ways to show how things blow up in the wild. It was fun stuff and linked the adventure, again, in it's own kind of reality. I believed the strange premise and everything worked from there for me.



Newcomer Onni Tommila is more than a match for the powerhouse actor his is working with. It was sorta thrilling to watch their relationship grow throughout the film and how Jackson gave his young co-star a chance to shine.

 

 

It is even fun to watch mission control back in Washington as people with some BRAINS are actually figuring out, using logical assumption, how to find the President in a huge forested wilderness.

 

Jackson must love the cold because I felt it the whole time he rambled around the mountains. And of course at any time any one of these stunts would have killed either kid or man. Thankfully in this movie they are both indestructible - like John McClain in Die Hard.