Directed by: Scott Derrickson
Written by: Zach Dean
On Apple+ Streaming
Starring: Miles Teller as Levi Kane, Anya Taylor-Joy as Drasa, Sigourney Weaver as the waste of a good actress.
WARNING: Movie contains way too much loud, pounding rock music designed to conceal the fact nothing is happening on the screen.
One of the many reasons I enjoy Stranger Things is the way it deals with the audience expectation of the possible vs the impossible. The narrative contains witty dialogue delivered by charming and convincing characters.
Case in point:
It takes the idea of a massive, clandestine, subterranean Soviet research facility located beneath a shopping mall in America’s heartland and makes it not just possible, but probable. Here in The Gorge, we meet a couple of disaffected sniper/assassins who question the morality of their histories as serial murders, pulling the trigger on strangers because someone in the government told them too.
It appears Marine Scout/Sniper school and the Ruskie counterpart recruits candidates from the Wilhelmina Modeling agency. I mean, Levi Kane (to me a Mormon name, which explains his superior marksmanship), a handsome brute who is reminiscent of a over the hill prizefighter, punch drunk at times, and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) a girl striking in appearance with cheekbones many women would just kill for.
We meet the now civilian Levi as he reports to a Marine colonial in company with the arch villainess Sigourney Weaver (who proves an actor will play any part if the money is right). Levi seems to have forgotten his military protocol Although in mufti, he salutes. A soldier only salutes if he is in uniform, and is wearing a cover (hat). He only wears a hat indoors if he is armed, and Levi is not.
So, this sad sack is offered a year’s assignment to guard a gorge located 500 miles from nowhere. “Where do I sign up?” He will guard the West rim and a Ruskie guards the East (It’s the gate to Hell as we are informed). It seems the contents of the gorge is a American/Russian project, a Cold War deal for the protection of you, the American public.
We meet Drasa in her snipers nest, where she shoots at long distance some poor slob (“with a wife and four kids.”) as he walks off a plane, remaining on the stop step just long enough for Drasa blow his brains out. (with an Accuracy International AXMC rifle, chambered in.338 Lapua Magnum. What can I say, I’m a gun nut. Which reminds me, both Drasa and Levi are armed with assault rifles, you know, the type with 30 round magazines that hold 500 rounds?)
We are told Drasa is Lithuanian serving the Russians. I’ve known a few Lithuanians, and they were not known to sing Gosudárstvennyy gimn SSSR or Gosudarstvennyy Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii (and you may think the Star Spangled Banner is hard to sing) . I knew Siman Kudirka pretty well, and he really hated Russians (see The Defection of Simas Kudirka, 1978 TV movie). He was Lithuanian. The way he told it, the KGB was like something out of a Stephen King story.
So, where was I? Yeah, Levi is flown within 38 kicks of the gorge. He must parachute in and hoof it, climbing up dangerous cliff-faces and other such endurances all the way to his new job. The gorge is in a no-fly zone it seems, requiring the delay in the story. Bare in mind, the gorge is under perpetual fog, so you can’t see jack shit, anyway.
Drasa gets the duty on the East rim.
Cut to the chase. Drasa and Levi meet cute after repelling a zombie assault from gorge-way, and things just get cuter as the relationship goes on. The Relationship? Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy have all the onscreen chemistry of two stray bulldogs. It’s what you get when they cast a film based on looks alone. Anya Taylor-Joy really tries; rolling her eyes demurely and looking girlish, but Christ, Teller is just not on her wavelength.
The gorge and what’s init? What you’d expect from a hack. Zack Dean. He was responsible for the silly monstrosity Tomorrow War. Clearly not a student of writers like Ben Hecht, William Golden or Robert Towne, he just throws in the kitchen sink and waits to see who might stumble over the mess. The bottom of the gorge contains elements of work of H. P. Lovecraft, King’s Jerusalem’s Lot, Michael Crichton, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the big bug filled grotto on Skull Island in King Kong, the headless horseman,w/horse (zombie division), a river to ensure the must talked about “infection” will spread, a church, a bunker where we see a 35mm filmed confession by a bad old scientist (anyone educated past third grade is a baddie in this sort of drivel), and a computer with internet access. A generator to apply juice at the touch of a button. A big dose of The Night of the Living Dead. Mutated version.
Keep in mind, no one has been into the gorge since the end of World War II. The plucky duo end up at the gorge bottom and learn the Ugly Truth. The entire mess is an experiment run by Sigourney for the benefit of the bad corporation, Blacklake (read: the real life former private army, Black Water) to create a Super Soldier (right out of The X Files).
Of course, those two crazy lovable kids shoot their way out and see to it Sigourney and her myrmidons all die. As contract killers they are morally superior to to Blacklake because they have fallen in love, and love, as you know, conquers all.
The end is stolen right out of the last scene of The Bourne Identity. Anything probable? Not likely. I doubt the James Webb Space Telescope could detect a single original idea in the pathetic excuse for a movie. Any reviewer giving it a good notice should be sentenced to ten years in the borax mines of Death Valley. Zack Dean deserves life, with no internet access.
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