★★★☆☆
4 September 2011
This article is a review of A LONELY PLACE TO DIE. |
"You need to up your game," Alison (Melissa George)
This could have been a memorable thriller, if the dialogue hadn’t been so woeful. Clunky, charmless, blunt and unbelievable, it kept pulling me out of the film until the action kicked in; and that was actually handled well enough so that I was less irritated by the chat. The opening is a mixture of spectacular Scottish mountain scenery (three people are on a climbing vacation), and rubbish drama. As one of them slips there’s a sort of scare , but not really. Then they meet up with some buddies, and carry on their hols the next day. This is where the movie starts to get interesting after a wobbly start. They find a young girl who doesn’t speak English buried alive in a box. Randomly. In the middle of nowhere. That sets the horror antenna to alert. It is unsettling and intriguing. They decide to split up (uh oh!), the two best climbers (including Melissa George’s Alison) take the speediest but most treacherous route to civilisation, while the other three escort the shell-shocked girl along a more circuitous but gentle path. Notice how I’m not really revealing names, that’s because everyone is so non-descript. Where’s the characterisation? Once you get used to not engaging with anyone, you should just sit back and enjoy the thrills, as some nutty guys hit their trail and try to get the girl back.
This could have been a memorable thriller, if the dialogue hadn’t been so woeful. Clunky, charmless, blunt and unbelievable, it kept pulling me out of the film until the action kicked in; and that was actually handled well enough so that I was less irritated by the chat. The opening is a mixture of spectacular Scottish mountain scenery (three people are on a climbing vacation), and rubbish drama. As one of them slips there’s a sort of scare , but not really. Then they meet up with some buddies, and carry on their hols the next day. This is where the movie starts to get interesting after a wobbly start. They find a young girl who doesn’t speak English buried alive in a box. Randomly. In the middle of nowhere. That sets the horror antenna to alert. It is unsettling and intriguing. They decide to split up (uh oh!), the two best climbers (including Melissa George’s Alison) take the speediest but most treacherous route to civilisation, while the other three escort the shell-shocked girl along a more circuitous but gentle path. Notice how I’m not really revealing names, that’s because everyone is so non-descript. Where’s the characterisation? Once you get used to not engaging with anyone, you should just sit back and enjoy the thrills, as some nutty guys hit their trail and try to get the girl back.
A Brit kidnap thriller using Scottish locales is not a regular occurrence, and if you’re going to embrace genre (and why not?), then that should be the jumping off point. The violence is at times bone-crunching, which adds peril to what might have been bloodless. George has a winsome quality which generally keeps you focused, though that’s probably more down to her striking looks, and persona, generated through an enjoyable back catalogue. At times gripping, it would have got an extra star for enjoyment had it not been too forgettable.