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This is a pretty good action adventure which is enhanced by the against-type casting of Meryl Streep as the woman who finds herself held hostage by a couple of robbers on the run while on a rafting family with her near-estranged husband and difficult son.
Although Streep is good she is matched by David Strathairn as her city-type husband who initially looks so at odds with the outdoor setting simply by the way he moves - and even sits. He doesn't have any emotional scenes but still manages to superbly transmit his awkwardness with both his surroundings and a wife and son who are slipping away from him. And while Strathairn matches Streep, Bacon surpasses her as the initially charismatic Wade, one of a trio of criminals on the run after robbing a cattle market.
The robbers, their numbers reduced by one after a spat, smoothly invite themselves to join the Hartman party and it isn't long before Wade is slyly exploiting the cracks he spies in the relationship between Tom (Strathairn) and his son Roarke (Joseph Mazzello). The film focuses as much on the psychological aspect of the interaction of the four main characters (John C. Reilly as Wade's sidekick is a bystander for the most part) as it does on the action scenes, which is probably why it was more enjoyable than the straightforward action pics Hollywood normally produces. Even the finale is as much about psychological cat-and-mouse games as action set-pieces - which isn't a bad thing in my book.
score /10
JoeytheBrit 24 June 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2085778/ |
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29-11-2019 22:56:32
