Score: 7/10 – this is becoming a theme
“Two highly-trained operatives are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from a mysterious evil that lurks within. They work together to keep the secret in the gorge.“
tl,dr: ain’t no valley gorge low enough, ain’t no river gorge wide enough, to keep me from getting to you baby
Not all canyons are gorges, and not all gorges are canyons.
This right here is the perfect movie for this site. To be perfectly clear, this movie is not “good”. It’s flawed, there are plot holes, most of the CGI is suspect, and perhaps most importantly – it just doesn’t really make any sense. Having said all that, I was thoroughly entertained and it’s better than most of the direct-to-netflix type stuff that’s out there.
The Gorge is directed by Scott Dickerson whom’s only other film I know is The Black Phone (2021) – that incredibly creepy Ethan Hawke film about child abduction. Miles Teller is Levi, an American boy who plays the drums and dabbles in marksmanship. Anya Taylor-Joy is Drasa, a Lithuanian girl who plays chess and moonlights as an assassin. That’s right – The Gorge is the bizarro world lovechild of Whiplash (2014) & The Queen’s Gambit (2020). Levi, after leaving Juilliard, has become a decorated military sniper amassing 113 confirmed kills and 81 “suspected” kills whatever that means. Unlike Chris Kyle or Mark Wahlberg in The Shooter, he has no Kate Mara at home. In fact, he’s quite the opposite – he apparently enjoys reading and writing poetry on the beach (definitely sounds like a Juilliard graduate now). Anya Taylor-Joy, is similarly a loner, which I’m sure is par for the course for a Lithuanian assassin. A mysterious maybe-the-government-maybe-not entity helmed by Sigourney Weaver recruits the two loners to THE GORGE and the rest, as they say, is history. The work is certainly mysterious and important.
The rules of The Gorge are simple:
- Stop what’s in The Gorge from coming out
- No contact is allowed with your counterpart in the other sniper tower
Now let’s say you’re Anya Taylor-Joy, a hot, elite sniper dropped into a remote sniper tower in an undisclosed country for a 1-year deployment. You take a gander across the fog, and none other than Rooster from Top Gun: Maverick (2022) is staring back at you. What would you do? That’s right, recreate Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” music video.
Exchanged signs lead to chess battles. Chess battles to rock and roll karaoke drum solos. Karaoke drum solos into poetry. Eventual the sexual energy is just too much for these two horned up, trained killers, and a rendezvous is arranged. And that, as they say, is when shit gets real.
Normally, I’m not a fan of action movies about one thing (the mysterious gorge) that force a romantic subplot for no reason. Here, it’s somewhat different, as the love angle is more a major plot point and less an afterthought to have female characters in a movie about killing _____. Maybe this whole thing is actually a euphemism for the Marvin Gaye song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” where quite literally “…ain’t no valley gorge low enough, ain’t no river gorge wide enough, to keep me from getting to you baby”. Love, after all, knows no bounds. While certainly not in danger of being any sort of memorable movie, I can give the filmmakers credit for seeming to “get” what this move is. It’s not going to win any awards, it’s not going to turn into a cult classic…it’s got two hot, big name actors that people are tuning in to see – not their farfetched plot – and they seemingly lean into that. I mean, if Apple TV even allows other entities to air their stuff, this thing has FX at 3p on a Tuesday in July 2030 written all over it.
Not even sure it’s worth going into detail on what the “bad” parts are as I hope nobody is going into this expecting to be blown away by a Christoper Nolan caliber film. The CGI is mediocre at best. The decision making of the characters when they’re not in their sniper towers, dumb at best. The staffing plans for what’s apparently the most important job in the entire universe are clearly lacking. The writing can be summed up by this exhange:
Anya Taylor-Joy: This damage looks seismic
Miles Teller: Yea, earthquake maybe.
I mean WHAT ELSE COULD SHE MEAN? YOU’RE LOOKING AT A FISSURE IN THE GROUND WHAT ELSE WOULD HAVE CAUSED THAT, EXCESSIVE RAINFALL?
Anyway, loved the movie. Would not watch again, but loved it.
Spoilers / Reaction
- There’s about a thousand things to discuss here but only covering the basics that really jumped out to me. First and foremost: the escape from The Gorge. All the bullshit down there aside (why don’t the half humans drive the fucking jeeps down there instead of riding horses), how do they get around ALL of the automatic defense mechanisms?? These zombie fucks are being blown up by mines, shredded by turrets, etc and MT and ATJ can ride a fucking Jeep wrangler winch to the surface without setting anything off?? I know, I know, you just said don’t take anything too serious it’s a silly movie but all they had to do was give us one line of dialogue like “they’re programmed to not kill humans”. Instead, masterclass in not having to explain things if you just cut forward in time to 15 minutes later after they’re back up in the tower.
- Just a hilarious lack of concern as well for being down there by both Levi and Drasa. They find one video where a dead (or now likely, undead) scientist says “all of this air is poisoned but don’t worry you likely won’t get infected unless you’re here for 5 days” and they just throw caution to the wind. They’re effectively at ground zero for the contamination huffing carcinogens at times.
- Don’t really understand them finding the random Mines of Moria door or how ATJ gets fooled by the oldest trick in the books: backpack-on-a-rope
- The CGI reminded me of SPY KIDS