Blown Out To Sea: Our Review of ‘Force of Nature’

Posted in Movies, VOD/iTunes/DigitalDownload by - June 30, 2020
Blown Out To Sea: Our Review of ‘Force of Nature’

Yes…you can screw up a perfectly acceptable formula…

Force of Nature should have been a cookie cutter B Grade action movie where you just take the formula, rinse and repeat…but they still kind of screwed it up.

A gang of thieves plan a heist during a hurricane and encounter trouble when a cop tries to force everyone in the building to evacuate.

This premise is about as predictable and expected as it comes, and quite frankly it’s supposed to be because the formula works, as long as you keep inside the lines but with Force of Nature it’s the equivalent of not being able to color inside the lines of the kiddie menu that’s on the place mat of your local chain restaurant.

The blame here actually falls on the screenwriter Cory M Miller who undoubtedly wrote a solid pitch and treatment in order to get the financing for this thing just didn’t do much of anything else.  The scenario was obviously a little farfetched but that’s OK, the problem here is that the film actually had minimal tension from start to finish.  The entire ensemble of characters was either ill defined or just kind off putting.  We’re supposed to like the cops and dislike the crooks, but we never gave all that much of a damn about either of them as the action ultimately unfolded in this race against time against the hurricane and the bad guys looking to get away with the art heist of the century.

Director Michael Polish is fine enough as the action is decent, but the general ethnic stereotyping that runs rampant in this film is actually fairly offensive and it’s all trying to be as trashy as it possibly can when it could have been a perfectly crapulent action thriller.  The high octane energy of an over the top B Movie is there but it doesn’t have any focus which is why it never really works and nobody is really done any favors buy being anywhere near this movie.

It’s all fairly low brow and offensive, which makes sense that Emilie Hirsch and Mel Gibson are cast in this.  At least Gibson is playing to type as the crusty and intolerant old guy, but seeing Emile Hirsch trying to play an apathetic cop who finds his passion for the job in the midst of this crisis again is kind of like trying to watch Kevin Hart be in an Abbas Kirostami film.  It’s the round hole and the square peg syndrome…they just don’t work together.

Kate Bosworth is married to the director (that’s her excuse) and stalwart character actor David Zayas tries to chew the scenery as our ‘heavy’ in the film but half way through you can tell that even he realizes that he’s just made a mistake…it happens to the best of actors.

Force of Nature should have been a fun little ride (see The Hurricane Heist) but it made the mistake of not knowing when to take itself seriously and not knowing when to lean into some of the gonzo bits and setups that it spread throughout film.  It needed to find a lane but instead it’s swerving all over the highway and headed toward the guard rail, so just slow down and stay away from this one.

  • Release Date: 6/30/2020
This post was written by
David Voigt is a Toronto based writer with a problem and a passion for the moving image and all things cinema. Having moved from production to the critical side of the aisle for well over 10 years now at outlets like Examiner.com, Criticize This, Dork Shelf (Now That Shelf), to.Night Newspaper he’s been all across his city, the country and the continent in search of all the news and reviews that are fit to print from the world of cinema.
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