Force of Nature: The Dry 2

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 )

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.

I have read 'The Dry' and 'Force of Nature' and now have seen both movies.

I believe 'Force of Nature' is a stand alone movie. The negative reviews nearly put me off seeing this one. You don't need to understand anything about 'The Dry' to understand that Aaron Falk is part of the federal police.

It was clever when going back 30 odd years, that the quality of the film was grainy.

The cinematography is beautiful and whilst some of the writing is a bit clunky, overall it's a movie worth seeing on the big screen. I enjoyed the performances by Eric Bana and Anna Torv who always deliver.

It certainly makes you aware of how easily you can get lost in bush.

I saw it by accident: its first week.

A noble idea got destroyed by poor scripting and politically-correct casting. Its big merit was the filming, Australian bush landscapes, but even those scenes had to be moody dull. There was far too much intertwining of timelines and unexplained lines. What body was found? Whose son found the body found by someone else. The lone wolf federal investigator was a Hollywood cliche, as were the classic eyeball confrontation scenes with the notional hero vs the police chief.

What stood out? Debra LF as Jill: an incongruous character in the plot, and with a mismatched husband, but still a great performance.

Do what I did: see it at a theatre which lets you brin in wine in a glass.

I rather liked The Dry, although I didn't rate it (or the book on which it was based) as much as most Australians, so I had quite high hopes for this one.

Alas, they were dashed almost as soon as the film began. The overblown, portentous music was set my Dud Alert quivering, and it was all downhill from there. Ridiculously over complicated plot with about four separate strand running at once, none of which were really resolved satisfactorily, and a couple of them not at all. I pitied the actors who had to deliver what must be some of the clunkiest lines of dialogue ever written, and perhaps the poor quality of the screenplay explains why the performances were so uniformly poor; even Eric Bana, who's an excellent actor, is terrible in this.

Just don't bother. There are far better ways to spend your time.