Force of Nature movie review: So bad it’s just bad
A strong contender for one of the year’s worst new releases, this Mel Gibson action-thriller misfires on so many levels.
You know those movies that are so bad it’s good?
The movies with so much overacting and ludicrous plotting that you can derive as much spit-take pleasure from an actor (or Tommy Wiseau) hamming it up as you can from a movie that’s truly, intentionally hilarious.
Force of Nature is not one of them.
Oh, but only if it were, then there would be some redemption to this clunky, poorly constructed and, worse of all, boring “action-thriller”. Spoiler alert, there’s nothing thrilling about this action here.
Starring Mel Gibson, Emile Hirsch, Kate Bosworth, Stephanie Cayo, Will Catlett and David Zayas, it’s cops versus robbers in an apartment block in the middle of a hurricane in Puerto Rico.
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Cardillo (Hirsch) is an apathetic cop with a tragic backstory who’s partnered with enthusiastic rookie Jess Pena (Cayo) when they’re assigned evacuation duties during the devastating Hurricane Maria.
But not everyone is willing to leave this one apartment building, including retired cop Ray (Gibson), his exasperated doctor daughter Troy (Bosworth), big cat owner Griffin (Catlett) and an old German man who, of course, turns out to be a Nazi (Jorge Luis Ramos).
At the same time, a crime leader named John the Baptist (Zayas) and his gang of disposable, unnamed Latino henchmen use the cover of the hurricane to storm the building in search of stolen Nazi paintings the old German dude is hiding.
Shots are exchanged, punches are thrown, and you best believe Chekhov’s big cat will all feature in the ensuing hour and change.
Force of Nature came in for a critical bollocking at the time of its US video-on-demand release in June, at the height of Black Lives Matter, for taking the backdrop of disaster in Puerto Rico to tell a story about bad brown people versus, primarily, two white male hero cops.
Those critiques are valid, but even if you don’t want to pay attention to how tone deaf this film is, it can’t escape from the fact that even without all that murky cultural context, it’s still a terrible movie.
First and foremost, the sure-fire way to suck all the dramatic tension out of a film is to create characters – on both sides – that are so wilfully irritating and two-dimensional that you hope they all die in the first 20 minutes, swept away by the might of the Biblical storm.
There’s no jeopardy or suspense when the filmmakers, including director Michael Polish and screenwriter Cory Miller, have given you no reason to invest in the outcome.
Hirsch’s boy cop has a generic backstory, some suicidal tendencies and an irrepressible smugness that is unforgiving, no matter how much Force of Nature tries to paint him as merely flawed.
Meanwhile, Gibson is doing his best Lethal Weapon revival as a crotchety retired cop crying out for oxycontin, more guns and no women in positions of authority. Like, that’s a schtick, sure, but his character is so surplus to the plot that when he’s gone, you forget he was even there.
One suspects Gibson’s involvement was only necessary to get the movie financed.
Also, if you’re going to call your villain John the Baptist and not follow through on a decapitation, well, that’s just rude.
On a technical level, the fight choreography is flat, the writing is cringey and even something as simple as the sound mix is mishandled – this movie definitely isn’t going for realism so why is half the dialogue drowned out by the noise of the storm?
While the running time is only a touch over 90 minutes, its laborious pacing makes it feel so much longer. It never feels like it’s nearing an ending.
Save yourself the grief and give the awful Force of Nature a wide berth.
Rating: 1/5
Force of Nature is in cinemas from today
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