Welcome back to the '80's! The age of dumb action flicks, with nonsensical plots and developments and one dimensional characters.
Despite the fact that this is a 2013 movie, it definitely has an '80's type of vibe to it. Not in a very good or positive way, unfortunately though.
Even by normal genre standards; this is one very stupid movie. Characters keep making dumb mistakes and it's the type of movie in which you already start to figure everything out, way before the character's in the movie start to piece things together. The developments in the movie its story are all quite poor and predictable really, which goes at the expense of both the movie its tension and mystery.
It's all no big surprise really, when seeing who all were involved with making this movie. First of all. it's directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. That name sounded very familiar to me and when I start to look him up, I immediately knew why. He directed some of the absolute worst movies, such as "Arctic Blast", "Tyrannosaurus Azteca", "BMX Bandits", "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2" and the two Leprechaun sequels "Leprechaun 3" and the abysmal "Leprechaun 4: In Space".And then there's Cuba Gooding Jr., as the movie its main lead. When was the last time he ever starred in a decent movie? Also hard to tell why he said yes to this particular. It's not like it's being a very original movie, or his role is a very demanding one. He also comes across as incredibly bland, which could be also be said for all of the other actors in this movie. Emmanuelle Vaugier arguably is the true main lead in this movie but it's also hard to get behind her character, since she just doesn't comes across as a very likable one. She's constantly smiling, flirting and cracking jokes, all while she just found out some things that normally would really shake a person up, emotionally.
It's also a movie with a very obvious low budget. Seems to me that they spend most of the money on its locations, so please don't expect any spectacular action from this movie. The entire movie is shot in Australia, which also means that it doesn't have a typical slick Hollywood style to it but a less stylized and less effective one instead, with some Aussie accents thrown in the mix.
Just stay away from this one.
3/10
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Just watched this on DVD. Your review was very accurate. I found the dialog unbelievable and the acting really bad. Like you, I also found it unreal how Emmanuelle Vaugier's character could be so bubbly in situations that a normal person would find quite upsetting.
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