Sugar Mountain

I woke up at night due to a storm and looked for some entertainment. This movie caught my eye, unfortunately.

It is a principle of mine to always finish a movie, out of courtesy. This time it was tough. Way too long, I had to force myself not to fast forward.

Empty characters, forced interactions and dialogue, a ridiculous concept to begin with.

All in all, pretty bad. If you watch this and feel any kind of sympathy or any kind of feeling towards any of the cardboard characters, then kudos to you.

"He knows the mountains too well no one would believe he got lost. You'd have to do it." Miles (Roy) and Liam (Coffey) are brothers who have been struggling. Looking for ways to make money they decide to fake a disappearance and sell their story. Miles, heads up a mountain while Liam reports him missing. What seems like a quick and easy way to make money soon changes the lives of everyone involved. This is a movie that had such promise. The idea was interesting and had me looking forward to seeing it. What the movie became though was a jumbled mess of plot lines that came from everywhere and made it hard to not only get into but keep from laughing at. This fake disappearance movie contained a hardened un-trusting cop, blackmail, an angry collection thug, false accusations, constantly changing sides and stories, hidden secrets and more family drama than a soap opera. The movie was just too over the place and distracted from the main focus of the movie, but then again it was hard to tell what the main focus was. Overall, a jumbled mess that reminded me of Aloha in the way that there were just too many story lines that didn't seem to fit with each other. That aspect really really hurt what could have been an interesting and tense movie. I give this a C+.

I have been waiting a couple of years now to catch this film on TV, and when it was recently aired I made sure I taped it so that I could watch it with my undivided attention. With first rate stars such as Jason Momoa and Cary Elwes I was expecting a much better thriller than what was delivered. The director Richard Gray does not have an extensive resume, his previous mainstream film was the 2014 film titled "The Lookalike". I have not seen that one either yet. After watching his latest directorial film, Sugar Mountain I am in no hurry to watch The Lookalike.

This film started off pretty good, but don't let the film name or the film's suspenseful and artful cover fool you. It's nothing special and quickly goes from a zoom zoom to a putter putter.....and then pffffttt

I give it a 4 out 10 IMDB Rating

We have all heard about true survivor stories and the big bucks, and sometimes a movie made for the story.

Well, we have almost the same thing here in this fictional story. Brothers Liam (Shane Coffey) and Miles (Drew Roy) hatch a plan whereby Miles will go into Sugar Mountain after a "fight" with Liam and get lost and be "found" later on and the story will bring in big bucks to take care of their debts. The plan is hatched, but things go south big time.

Enter Joe Bright (Jason Momoa) who learns of the hoax and wants money to keep quiet. Oh, oh, this can't be good.

Acting all around is very good and the cinematography is outstanding, at times. There are plot holes and twists, but to tell of them would give too much away. And, there is one very big twist later on. Let me repeat: A VERY BIG TWIST.

Okay, one lesser twist - that is obvious - is that Liam has a thing for his brother's girlfriend, Lauren Huxkey (Haley Webb). (Yes. Very obvious)

I was surprised at how many "producers" are listed in this movie. Hey, guys it wasn't that good. Not bad, but why all these producers?

Notable: Cary Elwes as Sheriff Huxley, and yes, Lauren's father.

The ending is somewhat of a reach, but plausible I suppose. (5/10)

Violence Yes. Sex: Yes. Nudity: Yes. Language: Yes.

So Sugar Mountain is s real place in Alaska? Interesting. I wonder if they call it that cause it's covered in snow? Went to see the flick cause Jason Momoa is in it. Looks like he filmed this around the same time as Justice League, cause he looks massive.

But the new Aquaman has a small part in a movie about two brothers and the woman between them trying to pull off an interesting con.

In order to save their small business they have a plan: Miles, the older bad boy brother would get lost on Sugar Mountain just long enough to make it worth selling his story to journalist and get paid like that dude who the movie 127 Hours is based on. Just to make his story of survival sweeter, an extra added story of Liam, the good little brother, openly confessing his love to his brother's girlfriend and the two brother's staging a fight just before Miles "disappears" on the mountain, making it seem like Liam may have had something to do with it.

Of course the not that interesting twist is that Liam does actually have a thing for his brother's girl (You see that coming), What you don't see coming is how long of a downward spiral the whole con is. Usually in a small town when one of their own gets missing, it brings the town together in a good way, and the three culprits thought that would happen, but the con was getting people they care about hurt, or bringing out the worse in those closest to them and especially , especially each other. It's like the boy who cried wolf scenario , only everyone else gets eaten as the demon's come out.

But Props to Jason Momoa who showed he was not all that one dimensional. One of my fav scenes is when his character Joe Bright ended up in a holding cell with Liam and his big ass roughed up little Liam in the ultimate scared straight "I'm never ever going to jail, ever" situation.

It was a real tangle web of deception. It all started with what seemed like an very easy get rich quick scheme, but as the pages turned in this book the twist just kept getting more complex and disturbing, till you get to turning the page that makes you go "what!?" and your mind is just blown away by how messed up these people are.

Sugar Mountain did the trick.

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