Heatstroke

I sat down to watch "Heatstroke" purely because I had the chance and it was readily available. It wasn't a movie that I had any plans to watch, just happened to come by it by sheer random luck. And I didn't have any expectations to it, nor did I know what it was about; although I had somewhat thought it might have been a disaster movie with the title "Heatstroke".

And now having seen the movie, it most definitely wasn't a disaster movie. It was an action thriller of sorts. Although, if I have to be honest, then it was fairly scarce on the thriller aspect. And actually equally so on the action part.

This is the story of unruly teenager Josie (played by Maisie Williams) who travels to Africa with her father Paul (played by Stephen Dorff) and his new girlfriend Tally (played by Svetlana Metkina). Here she doesn't find the closeness to her father that she is looking for, and she has to return home to the United States. However, something happens on the way back to the airport, and Josie wakes up bloody and confused in an overturned car, with Tally at her side...

I will not go further into details about the story, as that would somewhat be ruining it. Why? Well, because the storyline is rather simplistic and doesn't really have much depth or many aspects to it. It is a straight forward story, for sure, but it was just too predictable to the point where it was a mundane movie experience.

The acting in the movie was good, and I must say that both Stephen Dorff and Peter Stormare really performed quite well here. It was just a shame that Peter Stormare didn't really have more time on the screen, because his character wasn't fully utilized to its full potential.

All in all a watchable movie certainly, just don't get your hopes up. "Heatstroke" offers nothing profound or groundbreaking to the genre. In fact, it is actually a rather generic action thriller, to be bluntly honest. There is nothing here that hasn't already been seen in other similar movies.

I'm not sure about the hate this movie seems to be getting, as it is far from as bad as what some people are saying.

Plot In A Paragraph: Paul (Stephen Dorff) is a hyena expert who is preparing for a trip to the wilds of Africa to research them with his new Russain girlfriend Tally (Svetlana Metkina) and his teenage daughter Jo (Maisie Williams) from an earlier relationship. However things take a turn for the worse when they come across three villains led by Mallick (Peter Stormare) Dorff does as you'd expect, though he doesn't have that much to do, Svetlana Metkina does OK and carries the majority of the movie along with the awesome Maisie Williams, who stops Jo being the cliché of teenage brat/brooding step daughter.

Here is a movie that was striving to be great but only managed to be slightly above average.Everything about this movie should have made for 10 star reviews.The cinematography was beautiful but not stunning...and i didn't even notice it till three quarters way through the movie.The acting was the biggest disappointment.None of the actors seemed like they really wanted to be there...being those characters,feeling those emotions.The lack of strong emotion is why this movie failed to be great.The plot ,without the appropriate emotions to drive it,became forgettable.The closer to the end,the better the movie was,yet it was too little ,too late.Still above average,i just wont see it again...

Not sure why all the terrible reviews. Sure, this is not your typical Stephen Dorf film, but the actors all did a great job -- portrayal of the average American family dealing with a disgruntled teenager in the aftermath of a divorce and an absent father wrapped up in his work, revealed through a (rather weak) attempt of the father to "man up" and be a dad. Sad, but after the mishap with the dad (mentioned in the description), the best thing that could have happened to this teenage female was what did happen -- to be alone with, and dependent upon, the adult female character. Although there are instances in which coincidence is way out of line with plausibility, the story line, overall, is believable. I did find it interesting that we did not see more animals, as we were taken through the wilds of South Africa. The adult female, though apparently out of her realm of expertise, seems quite capable, I was surprised that she was not portrayed as doing some basic survivalist things that even I would know to do. Overall a decent film, not too many boring moments.

No spoilers in this review, but a brief summary of my impressions about the film: The movie was better than I expected, and I was a bit surprised by the low 4.8 rating (at the time of writing) on IMDb.

Granted, it's not a very good film, but it's not that bad either: The dialogue is OK and it avoids many of the narrative clichés you often see in low-budget films (even big-budget films as well), and the acting is (in general) more than decent enough (more about that later).

Thumbs up to the screenwriters for at least attempting to add some depth to the film: At first you may get the impression that this is some sort of action-film, but it's more like a thriller with some underlying "family" drama (with focus on father/"stepmother"-daughter relationships).

I was less enthusiastic about the pacing of the last half of the movie: I think the film could have been shortened a bit, to add more focus towards the end. I also felt that the foreign accent of Tally was a bit distracting, even though English was not the native language of her character (or the actress herself).

Peter Stormare was, as usual, quite funny. It's almost over-the-top, but he somehow manages to sell the performance because it seems to fit his character.

Maisie Williams is a young and very talented actress. Her character starts off as an annoying, bratty teen, but the turn of events help to bring her into a more sympathetic light (a lesser script could easily have made the character much more two-dimensional and clichéd). Kudos to Maisie for bringing her character to life, even though she didn't have that much material to work with.

However, one reviewer here wrote that "she does not have much acting skill. ... Maisie mesmerizes the audience with her eyes. People mistaken it for acting".

The reviewer couldn't be more wrong, in my opinion: Good acting is not only how you act or perform, it's about how you *RE*act. And Maisie's ability to communicate and express emotions via her eyes is one of the very reasons why she's so talented. She listens and reacts. Maisie's performances are also emotionally honest and "real", and it's not often I see these qualities in young actors in their first screen roles.

Overall, I think this film passed the "watch clock" or "falling asleep" tests: In general, if a film manages to entertain me enough to avoid these things from happening, then it usually deserves at least 6/10. Heatstroke started of well, and although it started to slow down towards the end, it still left a positive impression.