{"id":47134,"date":"2020-08-04T13:24:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T17:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=47134"},"modified":"2020-08-04T13:24:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T17:24:17","slug":"force-of-nature-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2020\/08\/force-of-nature-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Force of Nature \u2013 Movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            I could tell \u201cForce of Nature\u201d was a bomb based on the casting alone. The biggest name attached to this movie is Mel Gibson, whose prolific history of public meltdowns makes him an albatross to any project carrying his name. But he still has his fans from \u201cLethal Weapon\u201d and \u201cBraveheart,\u201d and he even directed \u201cHacksaw Ridge\u201d to a Best Picture Oscar nomination four years ago. So maybe there\u2019s still \u201csome\u201d room in Hollywood for him. Then there\u2019s Emile Hirsch, who in 2015 was charged and convicted of assaulting a female studio executive. The guy should not have a career anymore. I guess somebody connected to this movie thought Hirsch had enough clout leftover from \u201cSpeed Racer\u201d and \u201cInto the Wild\u201d that his name could be a boon to this film. And if you\u2019re thinking, \u201cenough with the actors\u2019 personal lives, how are they in the vacuum of this movie?\u201d they\u2019re terrible. Gibson lazily relies on \u201cgrouchy\u201d affectations and Hirsch is awkward and unconvincing as a cop. These roles could easily have been played by non-trainwreck actors, probably to better effect, though it\u2019s not like better actors would be able to save this dismal material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The film is a \u201cDie Hard\u201d knockoff where our heroes are trapped in an apartment building during both a hurricane and an invasion of violent thieves led by a man called John the Baptist (David Zayas). Cops Cardillo (Hirsch) and Pe\u00f1a (Stephanie Cayo) are called to evacuate the building, only to find out that some of the residents don\u2019t want to leave. Former cop Ray (Gibson) doesn\u2019t want to leave because he knows his doctor daughter Troy (Kate Bosworth) wants to take him to the hospital for a humiliating medical procedure. Elderly German Bergkamp (Jorge Luis Ramos) wants to protect the paintings that John the Baptist wants to steal. Distrustful-of-cops Griffin (Will Catlett) is willing to evacuate, but only after he feeds a hundred pounds of supermarket meat to his mysterious pet. The film is clearly building to a scene where the pet attacks the bad guys \u2013 Chekov\u2019s gun and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The action is exactly what you\u2019d expect from a crummy On Demand movie \u2013 rainy shootouts, shaky fistfights, and bad guys who always give up the element of surprise. Since the action doesn\u2019t start up for a while, we get that overdone trope where the film opens in the middle of a random action scene and then cuts to a few hours earlier. No doubt the film wants us in suspense over who survives the opening fight: main character Cardillo or a henchman who\u2019s like the fourth guy from the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The drama is even worse than the action. Cardillo is haunted by a fatal mistake from his past. Other characters tell him that it wasn\u2019t his fault, but it totally was, though the victim and a third party were idiots too. There\u2019s somehow time for a relationship between Cardillo and Troy, which is not only ridiculous and far-fetched, but I think the movie should have made Pe\u00f1a the love interest for Cardillo instead. The way she pushes him in an opening scene is something he needs in his life. Also, the film throws in some mentions of racial profiling and the Holocaust, as if checking these items off a \u201cwokeness list\u201d will automatically make the film deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The ending of \u201cForce of Nature\u201d is annoyingly abrupt, but I suppose it\u2019s a blessing in disguise if it means I have to spend less time with this awful movie. Nothing about this movie is original (save for the pet) or even likeable (save for Cayo). This movie never should have been made, and the fact that it was made means that some deplorable people earned paychecks, so there\u2019s that depressing thought on top of everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: D<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cForce of Nature\u201d is available On Demand through streaming services and likely through your local cable provider. The film is rated R for violence and pervasive language. Its running time is thankfully only 91 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             I could tell \u201cForce of Nature\u201d was a bomb based on the casting alone. The biggest name attached to this movie is Mel Gibson, whose prolific… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":47135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}