Review // Big Game

In the age of shimmering, overwrought Marvel monstrosities it’s easy to get nostalgic for the action films of old, when villains were simply power-hungry terrorists of indiscriminate origin and nothing was more thrilling than a good old fashioned helicopter explosion. Luckily Jalmari Helander’s Big Game is here to fill the void.

A Finnish-made throwback to the days of senseless screen violence, Big Game follows Oskari (Onni Tommila) a 13-year old Finnish hunter sent into the Lapland wilderness to bring back a magnificent trophy and thereby become a man. Encouraged by his father’s legendary achievements, Oskari sets off on his quest only to have some much bigger game fall from the sky in the form of U.S. President William Alan Moore (Samuel L. Jackson). Betrayed by his trusted bodyguard Morris (Ray Stevenson), the POTUS makes a desperate escape from Air Force One before it crashes into the snowy wilderness.

Needless to say Oskari is the first to come across the president and, in a clear nod to Spielberg, mistakes him at first for an alien. Soon enough, however, a rough friendship develops between the two as they team up to evade their pursuers and escape the unforgiving landscape. All the while the vice president (Victor Garber), the director of the CIA (Felicity Huffman) and a retired CIA specialist (Jim Broadbent) watch events unfold from a control centre in the States.

What follows is predictable yet fun adventure story filled with plenty of machine guns, explosions and occasional one-liners (Jackson drops one of his patented MF-bombs but it’s Tommila’s “Welcome to Finland Mr. President” that hits the hardest). Helander (who’s only previous feature is the Santa Clause horror Rare Exports) is clearly a fan of the genre he sends up – so much so that at times it’s hard to tell how serious the film takes itself – and injects the violence with a great sense of play. Tommila and Jackson both give pleasantly understated performances and are an engaging on-screen pair. Oskari’s desire to live up to his father’s macho image would have been handled much differently if Jackson had played his typical blustery self, but instead his President Morris is frailer even than the boy who befriends him lending their bond a refreshing realism in the midst of the cartoonish action trappings.

While the scenes in the American control room are pretty unnecessary they do provide for some nice banter. The casualty of these scenes however is Felicity Huffman who is reduced (perhaps in the editing room?) to nothing more than a token female presence. Overall however Big Game is a good bit of action fun that hits the mark more than it misses.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.