Directed
by: Lin Oeding, Starring: Jason Momoa, Stephen
Straw Logs
If you fancied having your photo taken with bearded beefcake
Jason (‘Aquaman’) Momoa and his autograph on an 8x10 at London Film and Comic
Con in July 2018, it would have set you back £150. On the other hand , you
could instead have picked up a copy of this modest yet competent DTV revenge
actioner for a fraction of the price.
Joe Braven is a hard-working rugged Newfoundland
logging family man. When he’s not supervising his tree-felling business, he’s
at home playing snowballs with his beautiful wife Stephanie (Jill Wagner), falling
asleep whilst reading bedtime stories to his sweet young daughter Charlotte,
and getting increasingly concerned about his ‘pops’ Linden (Stephen Lang).
Unfortunately pops is displaying increasingly Alzheimer-like symptoms which come
to a head (and result in stitches to his) when they cause him to get duffed up
in a bar after mistaking a random female patron for his deceased wife. Having
extrapolated pops from aforementioned brawl by displaying some impressive
muscle flexing, Joe decides it’s time to take pops up to his hunting cabin in
the woods for some father-son bonding and to raise the thorny issue of
supervised care for pops. Unfortunately a gang of drug traffickers have stashed
a sack load of heroin in the cabin, and they’re rather anxious to retrieve it:
at all costs.
The criminals are led by Garret Dillahunt’s
‘Kassen’, a man so ruthless he ignores a waitresses’ reproach for smoking in a
diner, and rather more ominously thinks nothing of repeatedly slamming an
incompetent accomplice’s face down into the table in full view of the diner’s
clientele!
So, after 45 minutes of patient set-up, Joe Braven eventually
gets to be brave as a stakeout siege unfolds around the snowbound cabin. The
stakes are raised higher still when Joe realises his daughter has snuck along
for the ride – and wife Stephanie isn’t far behind either. Time then for Joe to
get busy improvising with bow and arrow, axe, and in one audaciously daft
sequence, a bear-trap, as he and sharp-shooting sniper/hunter pops defend the
cabin against the heavily armed drug mob.
The stunning snowbound Newfoundland locations
provide a visually arresting backdrop against which Jason Momoa and a well-drilled
troop of stuntmen stage some reasonably decent action sequences. Momoa acquits
himself convincingly enough in both the family man scenes and when going mano a
mano against the one dimensional baddies. Thundering through the woods like a
man mountain and hurling flaming pick axes with aplomb, I couldn’t help think
Momoa would make a formidable Jason Voorhees if Paramount ever gets their act
together and commission another instalment. Mind you, would Momoa agree to hiding
his chiselled jawbone by donning a hockey mask and keeping his sculptured
musculature under wraps whilst chopping up camp counsellors?
Stephen Lang reliably adds value as Momoa’s
vulnerable dad, managing to wring some genuine pathos out of a largely
by-the-numbers script before his future care dilemma is unceremoniously solved.
Jill Wagner chips in with a feisty and welcome late-turn in the archery
department too.
One aspect of the production that niggled me was the
actual hunting cabin which gave the appearance it was newly built rather than
the ye oldie hunting lodge where father and son supposedly bonded for years.
(Watching the extras my suspicions were confirmed, it was indeed
custom-constructed for the film). Given the implausible mayhem occurring on
screen, this might sound like pedantic nitpicking, but it took me out of the
narrative at times when it really need not have. But freshly built IKEA cabin
aside, overall it’s a solid undemanding piece of ‘15’ rated violent(ish) entertainment.
Could it launch a franchise ala Liam Neeson’s TAKEN?
Who knows? But if DC’s upcoming AQUAMAN proves to be a washout, [it wasn't, I really enjoyed it] Momoa can
always keep his head and rippling shoulders above water with stuff like BRAVEN
- or appearances at comic cons.
*** (out of 5*)
Paul Worts
This review was originally published by FrightFest.
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