THE EDGE (1997)

 
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agate
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 11:10 am    Post subject: THE EDGE (1997) Reply with quote

THE EDGE (1997)
by wordswordswords2
RATING: 6

This David Mamet movie is noteworthy for some excellent acting–and Alaska has some of the world’s most spectacular scenery, glimpses of which are abundantly provided here.

The plot seems to be full of holes, although it isn’t always easy to figure out just what happened in some of the fast-action scenes. Roger Ebert maintains that the whole movie is a send-up of the “survivalist” genre movies, and that may very well be true.

How else to take the all-too-frequent brushes with death that the three men have? Once the ball gets rolling, after the plane crash resulting from a bird-strike, it’s just one perilous situation after another.

And they were warned about bird-strikes–told that they were probably goners in the event of a bird-strike. And, sure enough, there’s a ghastly scene when it happens.

Actually, according to Wikipedia,

Quote:
The majority of bird strikes (65%) cause little damage to the aircraft; however, the collision is usually fatal to the bird.


This movie isn’t pushing a be-kind-to-animals message. If you felt sorry for the birds, as I did, just wait until you get to the bear. Or is it more than one bear? This is never clear, but only one bear (Bart the Bear) is listed in the credits.

The bear (or a bear, but it’s probably meant to be the bear because towards the end the two survivors conclude that he’s stalking them) keeps appearing, and we’re treated to many death-defying episodes, with injuries galore.

However, at the beginning of the film, when everything is “normal” and we have the courtly billionaire Charles (Anthony Hopkins) and the shallow fashion photographer celebrating Charles’s birthday with friends in a mountain hideaway, the local expert on wilderness survival (played by L. Q. Jones) counsels them explicitly on how to deal with a bear in the wild, telling them to keep facing the bear but very quietly back off.

This advice is completely forgotten throughout the rest of the movie. Not once does anyone hark back to this bit of wisdom. Instead, they do everything else when confronting a bear.

But that’s all right because there has to be a movie, and if these men were so adept at getting away from bears, there’d be no story….

Roger Ebert says:

Quote:
we can easily predict the death of the assistant (Harold Perrineau). He’s an African American, and so falls under the BADF action movie rule (“The Brother Always Dies First”). The redeeming factor in this case is that Mamet knows that, and is satirizing the stereotype instead of merely using it. His approach throughout the movie is an amused wink at the conventions he lovingly massages.


He may be right. I’m not familiar with the genre but couldn’t help noticing that Perrineau tended to be tagging along in the background while the other two conversed–and as an assistant he’s in a subservient role anyway. But when Bob (the fashion photographer) makes a passing remark about shoe-shining to Perrineau, we get a strong indication of Bob’s truly caddish personality.

The long arm of coincidence is a bit too long in this movie. How very fortuitous that, just when the two survivors (Bob and Charles) are desperately seeking a way to kill the bear, Charles notices that the picture on the matchbox shows just the method that will suit them.

Coincidence is operating so unbelievably throughout that the movie almost has to be meant satirically.

Someone commenting on IMDb remarks that the movie’s real theme is the usefulness of the kind of knowledge that comes from books, and I’d have to agree. In many scenes Charles, who so often turns out to be right in his survival lore that people comment on how spot-on his knowledge is, is seen consulting a book, and he himself remarks that although he has a prodigious store of information, all of his knowledge is theoretical. The movie sets out to show that his kind of knowledge deserves respect–and this is true even though he happens to be one of those lucky guys who own a plane.

All in all, a very suspenseful and thought-provoking movie.
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Matt



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, Joan, I should watch that one.
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agate
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not a big fan of movies with a lot of gore in them but this one did hold my attention and wasn't just gore.
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