Baltasar Kormákur

Adrift (2018)

Adrift (2018)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) I am (appropriately enough) of two minds about Adrift—on the one hand, it’s an inspiring (true-ish) story of survival in a hostile environment, as a woman finds herself adrift on a small damaged sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a near-useless companion for company. On the other hand, we’ve seen pretty much the same thing already with All is Lost, and combining that with a Fight Club-type twist isn’t quite nearly enough to patch things up. Good special effects and an able performance from Shailene Woodley (who must have enjoyed the opportunity to break out of her YA dystopian persona), plus slick directing from Baltasar Kormákur, do mean that the film goes by smoothly and convincingly recreates the harrowing conditions of the ordeal. Still, the narrative sleight-of-hand (which becomes obvious if you’re paying close attention) does smack of audience deception and an attempt to add more juice to a story that may or may not have needed any. Even when it’s desperately flashing back and forth in an attempt to keep audiences invested in between the sappy romance and the far more involving survival story, there’s a bit of desperation to Adrift, almost as if it wasn’t entirely confident in its own material. Fortunately, Woodley is there to save the day and carry it home.

Everest (2015)

Everest (2015)

(On Cable TV, June 2016) This may sound ungrateful, but I’d expect a disaster movie about climbing the Earth’s tallest mountain to be a bit more … impressive. It’s not as if Everest is entirely missing in thrills: After reading a lot about Himalayan mountain-climbing, it’s fascinating to see a big-budget production head over to Nepal (even if only for a small portion of the shoot) and show us how it’s done. The capable group of actors assembled for the film is impressive, starting with the ever-impressive Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal as duelling climbers/entrepreneurs. Part of the film’s middle-of-the-road impression may be due to its insistence on sticking to a true story, the disastrous 1996 Mount Everest disaster spectacularly chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Interestingly enough, Everest is not based on Into Thin Air, while Krakauer shows up as a non-heroic character. There’s a limit to the amount of drama (or, perhaps more accurately, audience-friendly dramatic structure) that can be generated from a film intent on sticking to facts, and Everest finds itself limited to the real story. Direction-wise, Baltasar Kormákur has fun with some set pieces, even though the story itself treads familiar ground. What’s often missing, though, is a sense of scale: For such a big mountain, Everest is too often glimpsed from too close and the film rarely delivers on the awe of the mountain-climbing experience. Regrettably, Everest’s strengths only highlight its limits: While it’s a decent travelogue, it should have been a more absorbing experience. I may, however, revisit this film in a few years to see if I’m being too picky.

2 Guns (2013)

2 Guns (2013)

(Video on Demand, January 2014) Sometimes, subtlety or originality be damned, simple and straightforward is the way to do it. So it is that 2 Guns doesn’t need much more than a premise re-using familiar genre elements (in this case, two undercover agents teaming up against drug cartels after accidentally stealing far more than they expected and discovering that the other is not a hardened criminal) and two solid actors doing what they know best. Mark Wahlberg is up to his usual average-blue-collar-guy persona as a Navy agent caught hanging in the breeze, while Denzel Washington is all effortless charm as a DEA agent close to going rogue. Both actors work differently, but here they get a good chance to play off each other, and the result feels more than entertaining. They really don’t stretch their persona, but 2 Guns is a breezy film that doesn’t requires brave performances. (Case in point: Paula Patton looking good and Bill Paxton acting bad, stretching a bit but not too much.) Director Baltasar Kormákur ably follows-up on his previous Contraband by delivering an average but competent criminal action thriller with clean set-pieces and straightforward narrative rhythm. It’s hard to say much more about 2 Guns: Who needs a new classic when the same-old can be done so well?