Streaming on Netflix
Charlize Theron is an exceptionally attractive woman who is also blessed with startling talent. Her performance as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003) won her a richly deserved Academy Award and she has been nominated for two others since. She deserves a nomination for her transformative physical performance in this powerful thriller, that I enjoyed despite some lapses.
The film opens with Sasha (Theron) and her husband Tom (Eric Bana) scaling the sheer dangerous Troll Wall in Norway. Stopped not far from the top, vicious weather forces them down through the night. But an avalanche proves deadly and kills Tom, leaving Sasha to come down solo.
Five months later she is out again for extreme adrenaline rushes in Australia. This time alone she stops at a market for supplies and gas and is accosted by a trio of hunters. Helped out by Ben (Taren Edgerton) she waves goodbye and heads deep into a forest even after being warned more than twenty people have disappeared over the last few years. She sets up camp where Ben told her too only to have the aggressive hunters show up. Locking herself in her Jeep, they eventually leave her alone. She hangs her bag up night away from animals only to have it taken anyway. Forging on into the dense woods she encounters Ben, the nice guy from the market, and after an amicable beginning proves he is the most dangerous predator in the forest. He gives Sasha a head start, then hunts her like an animal. He knows the forests and always seems one step ahead of Sasha. While chasing her he massacres a family, and when he captures her he takes her deep into a cave and exposes the true horrors of who he is. And Ben is beyond a monster.
Sasha never stops fighting back and catches a break when Ben breaks his leg. Terribly wounded she decides to help him climb the sheer mountain to get out though nothing in this film goes as planned.
Theron truly a great actress tears into this role as though she were born to play it. Like Leonardo di Caprio in The Revenant (2015) this is a superb physical performance as well as an emotional one. She shares the screen with Taren Edgerton who seems to channel James McAvoy in Split (2015). It is a ferocious performance though loses some steam when the actor seems to revel in how truly bad he is.
Still the film moves quickly, breezes by in fact and Theron is truly a wonder.
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