BIG GAME
DIRECTOR: Jalmari Helander
CAST: Samuel L Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Mehmet Kurtulus, Victor Garber, Felicity Huffman
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12PG V
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
RATING: ***
BIG GAME is a wonderfully cheesy nod to the ridiculous B-grade action movies of the ’80s. You know, the kind with the ludicrously OTT storylines that posit the most outlandish of scenarios, that just happen to introduce an anti-hero who can do it all and save the world, with one hand tied behind his back.
Especially, it feels like a low-budget European rip-off of some hit US movie, which is funny since this comes from somewhere in Scandinavia and seems to have a decent budget. It turns out to be fun and just ridiculous enough for the unbelievable plot to be entertaining.
While Samuel L Jackson is the headliner on this one, he is not the driving force of the action, instead he plays president of the US and the one whom things happen to. Jackson is – for him – surprisingly low-key, slipping into MF mode only once, probably to keep down the age restriction.
Air Force One is shot down over the Finnish deep forest and President William Moore is rescued by a scowley-faced little boy version of Noomi Rapace’s high-slanted cheekbones. Teenaged Oskari (Tommila, pictured) is on his coming-of-age hunting quest – the kind where what you return with determines what kind of man your people deem you to be. But, just how he is supposed to top the bear his superhunter dad came home with, turns out not to be his biggest problem.
After he helps the president from his escape pod, the bad guys start coming after them and it becomes a race to see who gets to the president first – the bad guys or the US military trying to figure out where he is by remote control.
The big bad is represented by Hazar (Kurtulus) who sees it as a hunt for big game (geddit?) and, of course, he is of some murky Middle Eastern descent. Throw in the Secret Service guy Morris (Stevenson) who promises that he will find the president and we have an action film. The whole big game plot is quickly tossed out and replaced with a conspiracy theory, but plotholes aside, it is entertaining.
Oskari might not feel quite up to the task, but he turns out to be resourceful in his own way and delightfully non-American.
Finnish writer and director Jalmari Helander keeps things moving fast with a madcap sense of glee and no restraint.
The action sequences are slickly handled and the cgi is okay. The dialogue is a tad on the overblown side, but you go with it even as the story unfolds exactly as you suspect because the growing trust between Jackson and Tommila’s characters is believable.
It is so totally un-Hollywood, watching the mighty US military being defeated by the Finnish forest being such a wilderness and their bewilderment at the unfolding events makes the film wonderfully diverting.
If you liked, Hannah or Barely Lethal, you will like this.