Big Game movie review & film summary (2015) | Roger Ebert (2024)

Accordingto IMDb, Samuel L. Jackson currently has 163 credited roles as an actor. Evenif you remove his appearances on television and video games, that still makes him one of the most prolific stars of our time.Since his filmography runs the gamut from instant classics to the blessedlyforgettable, this leads one to wonder exactly what kind of criteria he employsto select roles. My guess is that there are some that he doesbecause he knows they offer him the chance to show off his genuine gifts as anactor—films like the drama"Changing Lanes" (2002), the underrated neo-noir "No GoodDeed" (2003) or his various collaborations with Quentin Tarantino—while others seem to have been selected on the size of thepaycheck for his services—offered enough money, who isto say that you or I wouldn't sign on for the likes of "The Man"(2005), "Freedomland" (2006) or "The Spirit" (2008)?

Thenthere is the third and oddest group of all, the scripts that are so bizarre andbewildering that I suspect that he agrees to do them almost as a dare to thefilmmakers to actually go out and produce them for real. How else to explainsuch lunacies as "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), "Formula 51"(2001), "Black Snake Moan" (2006) or the infamous "Snakes on aPlane" (2006)? His latest film, "Big Game," definitely fallsinto this latter category by telling a story of such a deliriously crackpotnature that there are times when it seems impossible that it could possiblyexist as a real thing and not just as a parody trailer that accidentally gotinflated to feature length. Alas, it never quite manages to live up (or down)to its nutty premise but that isn't to say that it doesn't have its momentshere and there.

In aremote area of the wilds of Finland, young Oskari (Onni Tommila) is sent off onthe eve of his 13th birthday on a rite of passage to determine his manhood—he has 24 hours to go out into the woods to hunt and bringback a trophy armed with nothing more than a bow and arrow. This would bedifficult enough for Oskari since he will be laboring in the shadow of hisfather, who bagged himself a bear when he did it years earlier, but he canbarely launch an arrow, let alone bring down anything with it. Although largelyresigned to his inevitable failure in this endeavor, he is still determined togive it his best shot nevertheless.

Meanwhile,in the skies above Helsinki, lame-duck and down-in-the-polls U.S. PresidentMoore (Jackson) is about to arrive at a conference when Air Force One isattacked by missiles and only barely escapes with his life when Secret Serviceagent Morris (Ray Stevenson) gets him into the plane's escape pod before it isshot down. As it turns out—Spoiler Alert—the attack was engineered by the resentful Morris as partof a diabolical plan by the psychotic and filthy rich Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus)to not only hunt and kill Moore but to stuff and mount him as well. Luckily forMoore, his pod crashes near Oskari's camp and the kid agrees to lead him backto safety and civilization, though not until after he makes his kill.Meanwhile, Hazar and Morris are closing in while back at the Pentagon, the VP(Victor Garber), a top general (Ted Levine), a senior staffer (FelicityHuffman) and a long-retired CIA terrorist analyst (Jim Broadbent) are watchingthe situation unfold but are powerless to do anything.

The premise is spectacularly goofy but writer-director JalmariHelander (whose previous film was "Rare Exports," that wonderfullystrange holiday film that offered an explanation regarding the existence ofSanta Claus that made even "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" seemstaid by comparison) does not play the whole thing simply for laughs either.That is actually one of the key problems with the film as a whole—there are times when it tries to embrace its silliness andtimes when it wants to be treated as a serious action film and the clash oftones is simply too jarring. There is also a strange lack of tension—there is never any real senseof danger and there are long stretches in the middle inwhich everyone just seems to be wandering around and marking time until theclimax.

And yet,while the movie as a whole doesn't quite work, there are some moments here andthere that do. Although Jackson seems to be treating the project mostly as agoof, he does have one good scene where he explains to Oskari that projecting asense of power and strength can be more important than demonstrating it. (It isso good, in fact, that it seems to suggest a direction for the story that isunfortunately abandoned far too quickly.) The casting of Jim Broadbent as theCIA analyst who knows everything is pretty inspired—yes, he gets all the usuallines that such a character is required to utter but they have never beendelivered in quite the way that Broadbent presents them.

I alsokind of enjoyed the wacked-out climax—without giving too much away,I can assure you that every time you think it cannot possibly get any loonier,it does. Nevertheless, "Big Game" is one of those films that tries toembrace two different potential audiences and winds up missing both marks—it is a little too silly for adults and a little too nastyfor kids. That said, Samuel L. Jackson has made far worse movies than this one—possibly in the time that it took me to write this review.