BEYOND THE REACH
DIRECTOR: Jean-Baptiste Leonetti
CAST: Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irvine, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Ronnie Cox
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LV
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
RATING: **
With his weathered tan, silky voice and bemused twinkle in his eye, Michael Douglas has aged well onscreen. The oiliness of the sharks and philanderers he played in Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and Basic Instinct is now tempered by the fragility that comes with ageing, and his turn in Behind the Candelabra felt deeper and more alive than nearly anything he had done before.
But not even Douglas can redeem The Reach, the silly new thriller he stars in and produced. It’s not for lack of effort; as a corporate meanie who drags a young guide (Irvine) into a game of cat-and-mouse in the Mojave Desert, Douglas spouts Chinese into a satellite phone, slurps cocktails and generally gnaws on every bit of scenery in sight. He’s like the one fun guest at a dull party.
Directed by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Leonetti and adapted by Stephen Susco from Robb White’s 1972 novel Deathwatch, this misfire of a modern western will probably struggle to gain traction outside festivals. It opens with stilted scenes between blue-collar tracker Ben (Irvine) and his girlfriend (Mangan-Lawrence), before Ben is hired to accompany Madec (Douglas) on a hunting trip through a treacherous stretch of desert known as “The Reach”. The trigger-happy Madec mistakes an old man for a bighorn sheep and pressurises Ben into helping dispose of the body. When Ben resists, Madec takes him captive, forcing him to strip. Ben flees and the rest of the film consists of a stop-and-start pursuit during which Madec berates Ben via loudspeaker, tries to flatten him with his jeep and nearly blows him to pieces with dynamite.
The power struggle between them comes with plenty of potentially rich subtext – a dose of class resentment, a touch of youth envy – that remains unmined by the film-makers. There are no shivers of danger, ambiguity or genuine wit in Madec’s interactions with Ben, or in their efforts to out-manoeuvre each other. Madec is a monstrously entitled bully, while Ben is an incorrigible bore.
Leonetti and director of photography Russell Carpenter make evocative use of starchy, sunbaked visuals, though the direction rarely rises above the functional. The chase scenes are unimaginative and there are wild lapses in logic and a lot of disbelief to suspend. When Ben digs his way into a hidden cave only to find the furnished living quarters of someone he knows, you may find your eyes rolling toward the ceiling… and feel your heart sinking as you realise Douglas has a dud on his hands. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked The Bone Snatcher, you’ll like this.