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Plot |
Paul (Stephen Dorff) is going on a work trip to Africa with Tally (Svetlana Metkina), his steady girlfriend. Then his ex-wife informs him that his teenage daughter, Josie (Maisie Williams) is having problems and maybe she should come with him on his trip. Soon Paul, Tally and Josie are rolling down those desert roads in Africa and it isn’t much later until Josie is complaining in how the trip is progressing. She begs to come home and everyone agrees, but Tally suggests that Paul drive his daughter to the airport along and leave her at base camp, that way Paul and Josie can have some alone time together. While on the road Paul notices a vehicle pulled off the side of the road and thinks the people there might be having some car trouble, but the real issues is that they are involved with poaching and gun running. Paul tries to leave the second he knows something is wrong, but this proves too late. Meanwhile at base camp Tally has been overrun by hyenas. Her satellite phone had been broken and her supplies were trashed so she decides to leave camp to find water at the nearest watering hole. What she does find is Paul shot dead and his daughter badly wounded. |
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Character Development |
There is some dramatic development, but mostly this is a cat and mouse game and with one of the three characters dead there is no a lot where the remaining characters can go. |
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Acting |
Above average acting all around. The bad guys looked menacing and everyone else look scared out of their minds. Fine level acting this is not, yet it was high quality. |
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Overview |
I believe this is a solid film that has a lot going for it. The actors did a fine job with their parts and the story was believable enough. I am not going to fault the story for be too simplistic because the layers were there in the details, in how the story was told in its style, direction and location. When the characters were on set they looked like they were somewhere. What was happening look real and the animals were somehow made available and in proximity of the actors. I don’t know how the producers were able to pull it off, but it looked as though people were in danger. And during the course of the picture there was also a wind storm that looked very genuine. A filmgoer would have to become extremely jaded to come down too hard on this movie and give it a poor rating. |
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