*** Big spoilers here so watch out ***
This was one bizarre animal of a movie. The interaction between the universally misogynistic police men and the conspicuously more highly-evolved poor persecuted police woman just stank the whole movie up and never ceased to blow my mind. I don't know if it was a feminist agenda in play or just diabolically poor writing but there was an overarching anti-male sentiment running throughout the police element of the story. It was completely unnecessary, utterly misplaced, and served only to bizarrely detract from the central story. If they wanted to tell the tale of the poor downtrodden policewoman VS evil Neanderthal men, they should have gone ahead and made that movie, but to try and shoe-horn all of this into another movie is a hell of an amateur move, and just an all-round bad idea.
Some examples I that stood out:
- the police woman not being included in the hunt for the criminals, despite the fact the sheriff is her father.
- the school yard menstruation put-down in front of her colleagues by HER OWN FATHER AND SUPERIOR. Oh seriously???? I never use caps normally by the way but this scene did offend mine eyes, ears and very soul.
- the grabbing of her walkie-talkie and throwing it in the snow so she can't use it, thus avoiding "getting them in trouble"(tried paraphrasing with square brackets but IMDb does not allow). Sheeeeeesh.
- the pushing her over in the snow and stealing her snow mobile. Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha - please make it stop somebody, please.
- inappropriate public reprimand from father after pursuing criminal, claiming that apparently people "start dying" when she gets involved - didn't even make any kind of sense, but I was numb to the poor writing by this stage.
This offensively ham-fisted anti-male pantomime GARBAGE absolutely slaughtered this film for me. If you're female and wonder what the big deal is, then I beg you please just try to take a couple of minutes to imagine a similar scenario with the sexes reversed. Honestly please try, and see how you feel about it.
This kind of anti-male sentiment has been poisoning Hollywood scripts for so long now but rarely is it this ineptly close to the surface or in such abundance.
Other non-sexist howlers in this:
- ex-cop abandoning his wife alone in the middle of nowhere when he's literally just been informed that there are very dangerous criminals prowling the vicinity.
- The main male character not questioning why his hitchhiker seems to have been completely oblivious to the police roadblock he literally just drove through and which she must have just passed or at the very least come from.
- The female fugitive seems to be in the grip of hypothermia while the male fugitive shows absolutely no signs of it. Bearing in mind how far she's got from the crash scene they can't be very far apart and he was no better dressed, so this made little sense.
- the male fugitive just happening upon a child molestation scenario providing him with the perfect provocation to murder the male cabin-owner and hide out in the cabin for a while. Given his childhood molestation experience this was a hell of a convenient coincidence.
- the liberated little girl's sudden clairvoyant instruction to the male fugitive to "leave your sister alone"(tried paraphrasing with square brackets but IMDb does not allow). Embarrassingly corny and misplaced.
- woman's calmness after being taken hostage by a *known* dangerous criminal. They try to justify this but it still doesn't fly one bit in my book.
- woman who's literally just been taken hostage demanding that the hostage-taker opens a window after he lights a cigarette. Perhaps that'd fly in a comedy, but not real life, and not this kind of drama.
- ESP on the part of the female fugitive when she suddenly states that she knows Jay is on the run.
- Jay's Buddha-esque compassion in instantly and completely overlooking the fact that the hitchhiking girl knowingly misled and used him to rendez-vous with her criminal brother at his parents' house, thus endangering all of their lives and directly resulting in the shooting of 2 apparent family friends. There are no words.
- girl slaughtering her own brother(who saved her from hell as a child remember), for the sake of a guy she met yesterday and cynically tried to use as part of a criminal scheme. OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH CCCCCCCCCCCCCCMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN.
An altogether aggravating affair, especially as I rate Eric Bana and think he and the other leads did a good acting job. The basic idea is a sound one, there were some truly well-shot scenes, and the whole thing had quite a distinct style to it. Sadly though this was contaminated beyond redemption with all the anti-male cartoon nonsense. It really crossed a line.
As an aside, it breaks my heart to see Treat Williams reduced to this slurry - he was such a powerful actor back in the day. What a crying shame.
So I guess if you're a raging man-hater maybe this will rock your boat or at least provide some ammunition. To men though(especially policemen) and to rational women(and yes I believe plenty of women would baulk at the same stuff mentioned above), definitely avoid this bizarre manifesto at all costs.
Apologies for all the caps but words escaped me and anger got the better of me I'm afraid. I'm off to burn my DVD player and have a lie down.
