Beyond The Reach

Year: 2014
Genre: Thriller
Director: Jean-Baptiste Leonetti


Plot: A young desert guide and his client, a wealthy corporate shark play a dangerous game of cat and mouse after the latter accidentally kills a man.


The gist: On paper, this looks like it could work. But unfortunately there are more things wrong than right in this movie.

Here's the premise: Ben, a young desert guide takes John Madec, a rich corporate bigshot on a hunting trip in the Mojave desert. Madec is clearly the kind of guy that deals with money all the time and loves flaunting it, from the expensive truck he drives to the high powered rifle he carries, and isn't above paying any amount of dough to get things done.

He accidentally shoots a man during the trip, and momentarily manages to bribe Ben into burying the guy and keeping things quiet. But Ben's conscience gets the better of him and Madec decides to force the boy to walk into the desert without his clothes, hoping the heat will kill him. Ben has to use his own resourcefulness to survive while Madec follows him to make sure he dies.


The good: Michael Douglas is perfect as Madec, reminiscent of his Gordon Gecko character from Wall Street. Jeremy Irvine is good too as Ben. Also noteworthy is veteran actor Ronny Cox as the sheriff. Russell Carpenter's cinematography is also worth mentioning as he gives a nice view of the unforgiving desert.

The bad: The plot is the film's biggest problem. Why would Madec force the kid to run into the desert and wait for him to die instead of just killing him right there and burying him? It's a big desert, so making Ben disappear isn't too hard. Then there's the over the top ending, which looked like director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti had a handful of endings to use and didn't know which one to pick, so he went with all of them. Douglas' character was also written poorly. He first seems like a desperate man trying to fix a problem that will bury him, but towards the end of the film he starts to look like a psychopath. It's based on a novel so i don't know how the story really played out, but the screenplay for this film clearly has problems.


Verdict: It's another one of those films where it looked good in theory but just didn't work thanks to poor execution. Skip this if you can. (5/10)