BIG GAME Review — Big Stars, Big Fun
By Staci Layne Wilson
@StaciWilson
The Scandinavian thriller called Rare Exports made a big underground splash. It helped Finnish director Jalmari Helander get his next movie – another dark little thriller but with much bigger marquee names –made.
Big Game stars Samuel L. Jackson as the President of the United States, Ray Stevenson as a traitor, and Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, and Ted Levine as official government types. But the real star of the film is a returnee from Rare Exports, the excellent child actor Onni Tommila.
To mark his 13th birthday and his embarking on manhood, Oskari is sent into the Finnish forest alone with nothing but a crossbow and arrows. He is to find and kill the biggest game he can, then bring it back to town for all to see and judge. When his own father accomplished this rite of passage, he felled a great bear. Oskari hopes to at least bring down an 8-point buck, but instead he finds the remnants of a plane crash. The lone survivor is the President of the United States, who landed safely in a special escape pod. Turns out the air disaster was no accident. The President has been set up as the ultimate prey. His trusted bodyguard sold him out to a bonkers billionaire with a shotgun and a greed for human trophies. POTUS is the biggest game of all.
Wilderness-savvy Oskari agrees to help the clueless Leader of the Free World, but getting out of the wintry-white forest and back to safety isn’t as simple as it seems. The boy’s family doesn’t expect him back until the next day, and while folks back at the Pentagon know there’s trouble they are a world away. Just two steps behind – and sometimes in front – are the bad guys.
Big Game is a feel-good, old fashioned Spielberg style “kids of all ages” movie; full of adventure, action, and moments of “aww.” It succeeds on those levels, but between the set-pieces and the cute character moments, the flick sinks in the snow. It’s uneven overall, but all’s well that ends well as the big finish is as gripping as can be.
Big Game will be out in limited release on June 26, 2015.
PG-13
1 hour 30 minutes
Find times and tickets at Fandango.com.
BIG GAME Review — Big Stars, Big Fun
[…] At Home in Hollywood thinks, “Big Game is a feel-good, old fashioned Spielberg style “kids of all ages” movie; full of adventure, action, and moments of “aww.” It succeeds on those levels, but between the set-pieces and the cute character moments, the flick sinks in the snow. It’s uneven overall, but all’s well that ends well as the big finish is as gripping as can be.: […]