Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director/co-screenwriter: John Barr, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Desperation can lead us to do some crazy things, so it’s surprising when you witness what Jim Reed (Tom Berenger, Platoon) does. A man trapped in the frigid wilderness falls into a stream and, in a life-saving attempt to stave off freezing to death, makes a fire with bundles of the stolen spoils he’s been hiding.
That’s one very expensive fire that gives a whole new meaning to the expression – “money to burn”!
Survival of the fittest is at the core of this adventure film set in the wild, natural environment of Northern Maine. The tone is set to imitate nature’s harsh code of survival of the fittest.
Reed, an experienced deer hunter whose days are numbered, is a retired marine who is riddled with guilt over the death of his daughter, and a son he hasn’t spoken to for quite some time.
He gets caught right in the thick of it: a casino robbery has netted five criminals
$1.2 million. What are the chances of Jim running into those armed and dangerous criminals? He stumbles on one of the thieves, a woman he accidentally shot while aiming at a deer, there’s a bag with a large sum of money lying in the snow next to her dead body. The quandary is keep the cash or call in the law?
When Reed starts trying to escape from bank robbers who want their money back, the hunter becomes the hunted and a cat-and-mouse game ensues.
This is an ambitious project, seeing it’s also Barr’s feature directorial debut.
His screenwriting skills along with those of Mike McGrale and Alan Petherick, at times, lack conviction. However, their dialogue highlights how Jim’s painful family history resonates with the current suffering of his regular diner waitress, Debbie (Kristen Hager) and her alcoholic husband, George (Jimmy LeBlanc). It’s obvious Jim wants Debbie to have the second chance his own family didn’t have, a facet that is portrayed without sentimentality.
Barr also does his own cinematography, capturing sweeping images of the frozen landscape that’s also a dangerous wilderness.
Fate’s twists and the somewhat moral lesson on greed are subjects for thought.
