Review: Apex

Director:  Baltasar Kormákur

Stars:  Charlize Theron, Eric Bana, Taron Egerton

Between the likes of Everest, Adrift and Beast, one gets the sense that Baltasar Kormákur is rather stuck on the tensions between mankind and the natural world, be it our urge to conquer or simply survive it. His latest, which has been relegated to Netflix, is again in thrall of the great outdoors, but finds man pitted against man in another of his savage environments. This time we’re off the beaten track in the Australian outback, as Charlize Theron’s thrill-seeking Sasha gets caught in the ‘rituals’ of psychotic adrenaline junkie Ben (Taron Egerton) who, one suspects, found a rather warped attachment to Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game as an impressionable age.

Sasha’s expedition is one of solitude as she’s grieving the death of her partner Tommy (Eric Bana) who plummeted from the sheer face of a Norwegian mountain some five months earlier, ultimately released from their shared rope by Sasha in an effort to save herself (Tommy was already clearly long-gone). Sasha’s savvy and capable by herself, more than adept at navigating the odious attentions of a pack of local hunters. Ben’s nice-guy veneer lulls her for a while, even when her pack goes missing and he offers an unusual level of assistance. Then suddenly The Chemical Brothers are playing and he’s brandishing a high-powered crossbow. Before you can say “Fast and Furious” it’s time to run.

We’ve seen variations of this before, of course, and even the Australian wilds have their storied history, from the likes of Richard Franklin’s RoadGames to the Wolf Creek series. What Apex has going for it is Kormákur’s experience with all-terrain action, and Theron’s similarly seeded credibility as a versatile action star. She’s at peak physical fitness for the role, and while Kormákur isn’t above using mostly seamless CGI to enhance some of the gnarlier stunts, he also makes the effort to show us when Theron’s putting herself in harm’s way, be it white water rafting or free soloing down some claustrophobic cravasses. One of these exploits leads Sasha into an eerie little shrine to local missing persons… or is it a serial killer’s souvenir den? A detour to Ben’s Gollum-esque bachelor pad confirms it’s almost certainly the latter (not for nothing, this scene also ups the ante of the movie’s capacity for crazy – a welcome effort to mark itself out as somewhat unhinged).

Egerton’s on particularly sparkling form as not-so-gentle Ben, grinning his way through cod philosophies on the reverence of the natural world which might make him good company for Jai Courtney’s shark-obsessed psycho Bruce Tucker from Sean Byrne’s underrated Dangerous Animals. But this film lacks that one’s daring accusations of audience complicity and, ultimately, this is Theron’s showcase anyway. Apex is nimbly mounted, and DP Lawrence Sher shows particular versatility, so much so that one can’t help but feel as though Kormákur’s latest survival thriller deserves better than Netflix, particularly whenever it shows off vertiginous shots that long for a cinema screen.

Things take a pleasing left turn in the third act, as Apex takes on some of the characteristics of classics like Ride Lonesome or The Defiant Ones, threading in a slightly laboured lesson in the necessity of teamwork and co-operation, seemingly in an effort to reject the lonerism of Sasha’s grief-addled worldview. In order to facilitate this it is necessary for the movie to slow itself down. In place of the hot pursuit, Apex reconfigures its opening episode into an altogether different battle of wills on quite another cliff face. And yet ultimately Sasha must rely on her own commitment, determination and resourcefulness if she’s to see through the superlative final leg of her climb to recovery. Theron puts herself through the paces and it’s hard for the viewer not to admire both the skill and gumption she exhibits. And while this is easily Kormákur’s most engaging joint in some time, one ends up wondering if it needed the schlockier genre tropes brought to the party by Ben at all.

Still, like Jaume Collet-Serra, Kormákur is positioning himself at the slicker end of B-movie fare. Maybe one day he’ll learn to flex outside of realms known primarily to subscribers of extreme sports magazines.