The crisp Muzak playing over the aerial-set opening credits had me questioning if I had fallen asleep and woken up in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room located somewhere on an early-90’s soap opera. The two men killed by arrows whilst working on a development project in the mountains lets me know that no, I am in fact here on planet trash. Marital drama between a sloppy large man and his elderly wife leads to a tree-climbing flashback. The young man who is now a much larger man falls from the tree and breaks his arm but when his pissed off dad gets angry at the tree, the boy refuses to blame the tree. Ok. Where the fuck am I? Another dude chopping down trees for the sake of development is murdered. A man with a sword and a woman with a crossbow are to blame. Enter a dopey forest ranger (looking like a DJ Qualls prototype) talking to his horse for COMEDY. Boardroom action hits with stiff delivery of government jargon and some slight sleaziness. Why they’re having this meeting in the dark with one light gel-capped to look like a nightmare scene from a very cheap Freddy’s Nightmares episode I cannot say. I just know the crabby business-head in a wheelchair is up to no good. So many aerial shots. In comes a journalist who would like a story more worthy of her talents than fashion nonsense. Mountain murders are pretty big time. Her hair is stellar. Missing workers has the development crews getting nervous, the extreme environmentalists look like catalogue models cosplaying as survivalists, that beefy lawyer with marital problems is trying unsuccessfully to get an injunction placed on the development, the main corporate stooge definitely smells like hair gel and his blonde super-secretary is hawt in a cigarette-blanketed dive bar kind of way. Lawyer man’s flashbacks to caring about nature seemed to have all been shot right before a bad storm rolled in. His daughter is worried about him. Aerial shots! Corporate coverups! And my favorite journalist sports one hell of an “interesting” hat. All these characters will come together in the mountains and it will come to a head in the most lethargic way imaginable. If the acting class that gave us Blood Cult decided to bless the world with a braindead environmental message hidden in a bodycount flick that forgets it’s a bodycount flick halfway through, you would have Mountain Fury. That’s just a fancy way of saying this is my kind of anti-entertainment. It’s an action/thriller hybrid shot through a thick pool of molasses and featuring neither action nor thrills. Windbreakers, questionable comedy “Lenny! Hold that bake-off story. This is BIIIIIIIIIG.”, endless dialogue to match the constant aerial footage (hey, you did rent the helicopter, might as well make it worth the money), a local bar that is my kind of watering hole makes a cameo, weekend warrior hijinks serve as extensive training, the leader of the dangerous environmentalists goes out like a complete chump and that Canadian “aboot” blesses my ears frequently. “Listen kid, ya got your mother’s looks but your father’s balls.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment