Subzero Film Entertainment, Altitude Film Entertainment, Egoli Tossell Film,
Risto Salmi, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Stevenson, Felicity Huffman, Mehmet Kurtulus, Victor Garber, Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, Jim Broadbent, Ted Levine
Young Finnish Boy Oskari (Onni Tommila) is turning 13 tomorrow, and per the custom in his village, he is being sent out alone into the forest to hunt a deer or other large animal as a ritual of his pending manhood and ability to provide food for his family. He’s small and his father, a great hunter, has some doubts as to whether he is ready, but he’s on his mission. But instead he comes upon an escape pod with the President of the United States (Samuel L Jackson) inside. Air Force One has been targeted by terrorist and shot down and the President is all alone and dependent upon Oskari who is familiar with the terrain to help him get back home. But the terrorists, once they realize he has escaped are hot on their trail, and someone close to the President must have been on the inside to help the terrorist pull this off.
This is certainly a B movie that is PG-13 for a reason. It’s almost aimed at teenage boys who won’t see the huge plot holes and the impossibility of some of the scenarios. It’s a German/Finnish/UK film that seems to mostly have been shot in German. But Samuel L Jackson, Victor Garber, and James Broadbent? This director has some substantial chops to work with here. As it is, it’s typical B movie camp, and I’m sure lots of people are going to HATE this in a “Santa Claus vs. the Martians” kind of way. But I don’t think it should be dismissed so easily as rubbish. Granted, a lot of stuff in this film is ridiculously impossible, but I don’t think a Prince searching all over the kingdom looking for a girl who’s foot fits into a glass slipper is highly likely either. But we accept the impossible in this type of movie giving a sort of poetic license for grandeur like we do in Ironman or James Bond or a number of other action movies. Gee, I think Vin Diesel and Nick Cage should have been pulverized a thousand times by some of the silly stunts they pull off successfully that are literally impossible. This is a camp movie, and for the right audience, I say what the heck. You can’t pull a scientific textbook out and look at every event with a critical eye. Instead, you should sit back and enjoy the action, watch all the cliche’s for this genre of which there is essentially every single one, and realize it’s not to be analyzed, but to be enjoyed by young folk who can suspend belief and enjoy the show. This is a typical Saturday Afternoon Matinee blast from the past with modern day terrorism and technology right out of today. Samuel Jackson, naturally, does his best camp performance of the angry, betrayed President as only Samuel L Jackson can do, and the young kid does a pretty decent job as well. An in all it’s a light-hearted, takes itself a bit too seriously perhaps, movie to just sit back and enjoy. Not everyone will like this obviously, but for the right mindset, darn it, it was pretty enjoyable.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
