Big game - 2014

It was such an absurd, silly movie, that I liked it enough, it was nice funny entertainment :-p Everything about it is absurd, from the premise of this movie that a 13-year-old boy saves the President’s life, to the fact that the bad guys put him into a freezer after they catch him so that they can later embalm him like a hunt prey instead of having him sit in the helicopter where they can watch him,  to the worst of all: that to get rid of the boy who jumped on the freezer the helicopter would fly lower having the freezer bump into the trees risking that it might get stuck bringing down the helicopter! I mean, it is very silly and very absurd, no doubt about that!

But, let’s take into consideration one thing: you see the poster, watch the first few minutes of the movie and the premise is totally clear to everyone, so you know this is not going to be about serious war tactics or realistic events or anything that should be taken too seriously. I don’t think it ever pretends to be anything more than it is. 

From the point of view of pure entertainment, this is not bad :-)

I liked the boy and his father, and their story :-) and I liked that the President, for once, was no action hero at all, by his own admission he was very good at pretending to be strong.

The story: It starts introducing Oskari (Onni Tommila) and his father Tapio (Jorma Tommila) - and only now looking up the names on imdb I see the actors have the same surname. It doesn’t say anything on imdb about them, but are they really father and son? That would be fantastic. I mean, funnily enough watching the movie I thought they looked nothing alike :lol: but the two of them were the best part of the movie, so it’d be nice :-)

Back to the story: they tell us that where they live, in northern Finland, every boy at the age of thirteen is sent alone into the deep forest to hunt and prove that they have become men. Now it’s Oskari’s turn, and although he can’t even draw properly the bow string, so basically he failed his first test, the father insists on him being allowed to go hunting. Since Tapio is a well respected hunter, they let Oskari go on his adventure. 

After them, we get introduced to two people inside the air force one, the president William Moore (Samuel L. Jackson) and his chief of security Morris (Ray Stevenson). We also see a group of terrorists about to launch missiles at the air force one as well as at the other planes escorting it. 

At the first sight of danger, Morris follows procedures, having the president escape in a secure capsule and the security guys parachuting after him to protect him when they land. We found out here that Morris is in on it, because he shoot one man and he disabled the other men’s parachutes. So they want the president alive, apparently.

Oskari finds the capsule and opens it - because it can’t be opened from the inside… which is another silly thing. I have no idea how it really works, but I doubt it could be like this: what if something happens, and nobody can open it, and he can’t get out? It’s absurd!

Anyway, Oskari finds it, opens it, and is very cautious, wondering from what planet he might be coming from… after the necessary introductions, they travel together, but not back to any town because Oskari’s adventure has just started and he can’t come home without a prey; the president just follows him because at least Oskari knows where he is, out there alone Moore would be lost. Oskari reaches the site his father told him about; Tapio told him it’s a good place for hunting, full of preys, but it turns out that Tapio left there in a freezer a head (and I think a heart) with a note saying ‘happy birthday’…. now this is at the same time a nice thing and a bad thing. Nice because dad made sure he would not come back empty, which would be terrible and also terribly embarrassing for the kid, but bad because it means that his dad is not 100% sure that he can do it by himself. Oskari feels very low about this, feeling that his father has no faith in his ability… Bill encourages him, tells him he believes in him, and then tells him to run away because he saw that the guys after him have found them.

Oskari doesn’t run, he tries to face Morris keeping him away with his bow, but he can’t shoot - I mean, a bow like that must require quite a lot of strength, poor boy. He eventually runs away because the others are big and strong and have weapons. He watches while Bill is put into the freezer (sic) and attached to the helicopter, and he makes up his mind that this is the mission the forest gave him: instead of bringing back an animal’s head, he’ll bring back the Us president alive. He jumps on the flying freezer, and here is when they bump into trees (and yet Bill does not jump out…). Oskari is thrown down but they are so low he doesn’t get hurt; he jumps back on and cuts the strings and the freezer falls down. Oskari jumps in too and makes the freezer roll down into the lake (I think they said it was a lake…) They end up right next to where the air force one is (another coincidence: the forest is so big and yet Oskari finds Bill’s other shoe and Bill finds the corpses of the security guys - (I guess it was his shoe, or maybe it was one of the shoes lost by the poor guys, in which case they have the same size…) and now they find the plane…

All of this is followed by the Vice President (Victor Garber) and his team: the cia director (Felicity Huffman - it often is a woman in movies, and yet wikipedia shows 25 faces of men) plus their anti-terrorism expert (Jim Broadbent). It took me a second to guess the vice president involvement, and it is soon revealed that the expert is actually the one giving the orders… so it’s not such a big surprise when at the end the expert kills the vice president so nobody will ever find out his own involvement since everybody else had died too. A little of a surprise was that he got away with it: it was the only realistic bit of the movie :-p

Oskari and Bill swim inside the plane, get to the pilots seats, and eject the seats because a bomb has been put inside the plane. While they are in the air, Morris wants to shoot them from the helicopter, but stays still while Oskari tries to shoot him. The arrow goes a long way this time, but not enough, it barely touches Morris who smiles and prepares to fire. Luckily (sigh) the metal splinter near his heart evidently moved a bit because he died… 

The ending is this: they all think Bill died and the vice president takes his oath but is then killed when Bill comes out alive. 

The US army (or navy seals, or whatever force they sent this time, I’m not being irreverent I simply am not sure I remember correctly) finally gets there and they aim their weapons at the Finnish people waiting for Oskari’s return (well, they haven’t found any bad guys, but they found all the good guys, good job), and right enough they are able to pilot the ejected seats to the exact right place. Oskari emerges like a hero, and Bill right behind him. Tapio is very surprised to see them together, but also very very proud at hearing Bill’s words about Oskari’s courage: Bill calls him “the bravest man”, and both Oskari and Tapio are very happy and very proud, and rightly so :-)

The end.

ITA big game-caccia al presidente