Force of Nature: Oltre l'inganno

A sequel to 2021's sleeper hit The Dry, Force Of Nature: The Dry 2 once again follows brooding detective Aaron Falk where after his informant (Anna Torov) gets lost in the forest on a work retreat he joins a search and rescue team to help find her. Along the way he's forced to confront more of his childhood trauma.

Unfortunately the title for this movie sets the stage for what is a pretty convoluted and muddled movie and is overall a step down in my opinion compared to the first. There are three competing storylines here, the group of women, Aaron's trauma from his past and a serial killer subplot that literally goes nowhere. All of these storylines compete for attention but in the end they all end up falling flat. Also with the exception of Eric Bana as Falk almost every other character in this movie is unlikable (with maybe the only other exception being Mortal Kombat's Sisi Stringer.) With so much going on here it's surprising how unsatisfying and bland this movie was. Five stars for Bana though who is pretty much the only reason this might be worth your time.

Jane Harper wrote a third and final Aaron Falk book that was published last year so I feel like it's inevitable that it also gets adapted to make a trilogy out of this. Hopefully it's more in line with the first movie compared to this and it can finally give Bana's Aaron Falk some sense of happiness because the amount of past and present trauma he's endured throughout both Dry movies is kind of crazy.

5 women embark on a company team building exercise, backpacking for 3 days into the forest. However only 4 return and a search is quickly launched for the 5th, Alice, played by the excellent Anna Torv. Enter detective Falk (Eric Bana) who needs to find Alice as she has been working undercover in the company for Falk in an attempt to expose fraud by bad guy Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh).

Sequel to 'The Dry', which whilst not as good as the original is still an enjoyable watch. What director Robert Connolly does is to almost seamlessly intertwine Falk's investigation with flashbacks to what the group did. In most films this is done in large chunks, but here it moves more quickly, neatly shifting from one timeline to the other merging them into one. The 5 women make for a good team playing nicely off each other, mixing truth and lies to Falk and us, with Bana solid and sincere, thinking back to backpacking in his youth which lead to a tragedy and Roxburgh, ideal as the cocky slime ball. Worth catching.

Not as good as the first film ...I think , mainly because the missing lady , was annoying and unpleasant , just couldn't feel anything for her ... Otherwise , not bad ...Kind of satisfied the urge I have lately to return to the old fashioned style of cinematography , when films were more about character development and acting than special effects and non stop action . This film ,definitely , achieves that : there was almost no violence or fights or car chases, or , for that matter -casual nudity or sex . That's why for me it was a pleasant reminder of the days once and for all gone ... I mean , I love some crazy action , but sometimes just want to sit quietly and enjoy a bit of a cerebral thriller )

I found this movie to be really well done. The music, acting, writing, plot and overall STYLE is terrific.

There is a lot going on - several underlying plots and backstories. I won't spoil anything for you, but I'll give you a leg up on the backstory:

Alice works for a powerful law firm or accounting firm (or something) that launders money for powerful international criminals.

Her daughter had bullied another girl at their exclusive prep school, and the school had threatened to kick the girl out. Alice then stole money from her work and "donated" it to the school in order to keep her daughter from getting kicked out.

Eric Bana is a policeman who focuses on financial crimes, and he had caught Alice stealing the money. So now, Alice is an informant for Bana, and if Alice stops cooperating, Bana will make sure everybody finds out about her theft and she'll either go to jail or get killed by the crooked people she works for.

Then, Alice goes on a team-building hiking/camping trip with 4 other people she works for, and she disappears.

That's where the movie starts.

My wife and I just picked it sort of at random out of the gigantic number of movies on all of our streaming services, but we were very pleasantly surprised.

Every once in a while you just stumble upon a gem, and this definitely qualifies.

This film was gripping and unsettling. Contrary to popular opinion, I enjoyed the second one more! It delved into the realm of psychological thriller more than a drama, which the first film leaned into. This made it exciting to watch. The lush forest landscape was a stunning antithesis to the dry countryside depicted in the first movie and the performances were very believable. Sadly, there is a "but". In the way Australian films quite often go, it didn't quite hit the high mark of a jaw-dropping plot twist at the end. Rather, it flatlined. The story could have been more ambitious and punched higher by providing more twists and turns. Additionally, the film explored a number of sub-plots that weren't answered in the end or cleverly tied-off. Overall, this is worth a watch in the cinema and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.