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Heatstroke

12/29/2016

4 Comments

 

D
​1.08

A family is threatened by poachers and nature on a trip to Africa.

Directed by Evelyn Purcell
Starring Stephen Dorff, Maisie Williams, and Svetlana Metkina
Initial Review by Chris Cook

Picture
Based on the novel Leave No Trace by Hannah Nyala West (I wonder if it’s any better), Heatstroke is, well, it’s a movie. The feature film debut of Game of Throne’s Maisie Williams falls pretty flat. A comment earlier from the Facebook page describes the movie as Arya Stark running from poachers in the desert. With this being part of the plotline, it’s a safe bet to say that winter is definitely not coming in this one.

I can say that I was okay with the boring generic plot; the main problem I had with this film was the probable miscasting. The three leads Paul (Stephen Dorff, an early nominee for worst actor), Tally (Svetlana Metkina) and Josie (Williams), in my opinion, had absolutely zero chemistry. The dialogue was horrible to begin with, but I literally felt like they replaced the audio track with the initial script table read. Barely a single line spoken came across as natural to me.

The basic story is that the three venture to Africa on a work trip to study a pack of hyenas—Paul, the scientist, or professor or whatever the hell he was; Tally, his Russian girlfriend; and Josie, his troubled and possibly drug-taking daughter. The first good chunk of the movie sets Paul up to be the protagonist and we’re dealing with family issues; the daughter hates the girlfriend, the daughter hates that her dad is always away, the daughter hates being in Africa, etc.

After enough bitching, it’s decided that Josie can return home to her mother. A mishap run-in with some poachers leaves Paul dead and Josie (or Arya, as I might accidentally call her in the future) on the run. She reconnects with Tally (who had stayed behind, but had to leave the campsite after hyenas got into her supplies). The two of them are now hiding from the poachers because they know too much about their apparent operation, which I don’t believe was really explained (they were poaching a rhino and I saw lots of firearms). This is where the protagonist role tends to shift to Tally, whose character now shifts to an alpha female role, dominate and protective—like a hyena (sigh).

If this was supposed to be an action/adventure/suspense movie, there wasn’t much available. Problems experienced throughout the movie included a dead iPad battery, getting stung by a scorpion, a sandstorm, a search airplane flying around multiple times but never finding them and numerous stare-downs with hyenas.


I did like the “hyenas, hyenas, hyenas” line by Josie. But seriously, with all the hyenas, not even the
Lion King’s Shenzi, Banzai and Ed could’ve saved this one.


The “villains,” if you can even really call them that, were a joke. The leader, played by Peter Stormare, didn’t show much authority that it was his operation and that he was in charge. One guy was the worst security guard in cinematic history; Shooty McGee, the guy that actually killed Paul, was a stereotype and hard to understand at times. The only villain that was interesting was the one that rode around with Shooty McGee. Having a daughter himself, he allows the two women to escape during a non-climatic gun battle toward the end that for some reason went into super slow motion at one point. But by the time he showed some character, we were passed the point that I stopped caring.


Some random thoughts …


At their base camp toward the beginning, when they were watching the hyenas, how many freakin’ tents did they need? It looked like a small army had set up camp.


When the poachers return to the crashed car, it was daytime wasn’t it? But it was nighttime when they left. How long did it take them to bury a body and set a car on fire? What the hell else did they do? Comb the desert?


The end of the movie shows Tally and Josie visiting the grave that the poachers put Paul in. They put flowers on top. So, Paul’s wishes were to be buried in a shallow grave in the middle of an African desert? Wouldn’t they retrieve the body and take it home?


​I don’t know about this one. The only thing I do know is that had Maisie Williams portrayed the character of Arya Stark in this movie, those poachers would’ve all been in deep shit and dead a lot sooner. This movie tried, but definitely failed. And my bad movie trend continues; going D+ with this one.
4 Comments
Bryan
12/29/2016 06:52:58 pm

The best part of this movie was the hyenas and they were mostly left out. I kept expecting the hyenas to attack the poachers, that would have been better than what we saw.

I think this movie compares to Tomb Raider. If you're grading this higher, I'd love to hear why.

I'm going with a D-

Reply
Sean
12/29/2016 07:49:36 pm

There's Nothing to like
Not really hatable though
This is a nothing
D+

Reply
Jon
1/6/2017 04:20:31 pm

Poor Stephen Dorff. He gets to be the ostensible lead in a movie alongside an up-and-coming Maisie Williams, potentially getting him out of the Walmart $3 movie bin and maybe even a promotion onto the C-list. Instead, he's killed off-camera and replaced by a Russian actress who hasn't done anything in the three years since Heatstroke was released. This barely-qualifying-as-a-surprise twist puts Dorff in the back seat, which honestly isn't a terrible place to find oneself in such a badly made disaster.

Heatstroke has complementary problems of obvious short hand for its characters and clumsy opacity in its scenes. Williams' Jo is as complex as the red streak in her hair. She plays one of my favorite characters on Game of Thrones, and Purcell reduces her to a hack who can make crying noises but not change her facial expressions while doing so. Dorff's whole character is in his stubble, as in 'he's a scientist, but he's too relaxed to shave all the time, brah.' Svetlana Metkina is only a survivor type with no life of her own outside this awful family. Reluctant poacher is reluctant, creepy poacher is creepy, reckless poacher is reckless. Peter Stormare strikes me as a Nic Cage/late-career De Niro where he will just say yes to anyone who asks him to play a bad guy, and he's on autopilot here.

To go along with her paper-thin characters, director Evelyn Purcell makes the action as difficult as possible. Despite how straightforward the plot is (elude pursuers, get to safety), scene to scene, it's a jumbled mess. Stormare's lead poacher shrugs off chasing them at night when they're closest, because why the hell not. They escape because he has to show Creepy Poacher a new gun that doesn't come up again in the remainder of the film. Jo's there in the first place because she strolled into a camp she had no reason to think was safe. Things just happen because the script makes them happen, as people just wouldn't act like this. The reason and the result of scenes are often dumb, but the content is just as bad. The final shootout is horribly spaced and edited, with characters that keep clumsily entering the frame from a location way too close to the action to not impact what's happening onscreen.

I respect Cook's hunt for the good-bad movie, a rare treasure worth seeking, but Heatstroke is absolutely not it. Nathan Rabin, a writer at the AV Club, has a World of Flops feature about culture that doesn't work, and he puts everything into Failure, Fiasco, and Secret Success categories. Fiasco is the sweet spot, defined as a failure of epic proportions. Heatstroke is just a boring, run-of-the-mill Failure, like so many hundreds of movies that don't get theatrical releases due to their general crappiness. The bottom of the bargain bin is a deserving place for this, provided someone spent the money to make the DVD's. D

Reply
Drew
1/13/2017 09:25:53 pm

This one was tough to watch. Heatstroke had nothing to make me want to turn on the film nor a hook to keep me watching. The melodramatic teen hating the step mother and her father was incredibly over the top that the film was stopped and no desire to finish it was had. That makes for a bad film.

Grade: D

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