A woman, travelling alone through snowbound northern Minnesota, interrupts the kidnapping of a teenage girl. Hours from the nearest town and with no phone service, she realizes that she is the young girl’s only hope.
Chuck says:
In 2008, Liam Neeson’s career took an unexpected turn when he starred in “Taken,” a standard, but well-executed thriller about a former CIA agent who sets out to rescue his kidnapped daughter. The actor later said he expected the film to bomb and the primary reason he agreed to do it was to spend four months in Paris. To his surprise, and many others, it hit a nerve with international audiences, bringing in a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office, spawning two sequels and setting Neeson on a career path in which he’s starred in one pale imitation after another of the “Taken.”
I’m hoping his colleague and sometime co-star Emma Thompson isn’t following in his footsteps. Her latest, “Dead of Winter” is cut from the same cloth as Neeson’s many “Taken” knockoffs, as its premise revolves around a haunted character seeking redemption who must rest a young person in peril. Unfortunately, screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Keeb make many of the mistakes these films make as their story contains more than a few forehead-smacking moments. Too often, the characters’ actions defy reason, their intelligence abandoning them at key moments.
Set during a brutal Minnesota winter, Barb (Thompson) embarks on an ill-advised trip to a remote lake as the weather is taking a turn. Relying on her foggy memory of days from long ago, she loses her way and stops at an isolated home to ask directions. Its seeming sole inhabitant (Marc Menchaca) is less than cordial. Still, he manages to grunt out a helpful pointer or two but not before Barb notices a large patch of blood-soaked snow nearby.
Dismissing it, our heroine heads to her destination. As she makes her journey, we’re privy to flashbacks of her first date with her husband, which took place at the lake she seeks, where they went ice fishing. However, as Barb tries to replicate this moment, having cut through the ice and dropped her line, her reveries are interrupted by screams and gunshots. Soon, she’s greeted by the sight of her reluctant navigator chasing and catching a young woman (Leah Marsden), threatening to kill her if she tries to escape once more. As Barb sets out to rescue her, she soon discovers a formidable foe in the person of the man’s desperate wife (Judy Greer).
To be sure, most action films require that our suspension of disbelief be stretched a bit more than usual. However, mine reached its breaking point before 30 minutes had gone by. Jacobson-Larson and Keeb shamelessly pad their script by having Barb, who seems like a reasonably intelligent person, makes one bonehead move after another. These actions put her in peril repeatedly, extending the story unnecessarily. An encounter with two hunters who decide to take matters into their own hands is most egregious example of plot inflation, one of many incidents included to bolster the script to feature length but fail to move the story forward.
To cap it all off, the couple’s reasoning behind kidnapping the teen is nonsensical and insulting. My eyes could not have rolled any further back into my head after this revelation. And what makes all this so regrettable is there’s a poignant story at the heart of “Dead.” The flashbacks woven in between the tired action tropes, recounting Barb and her husband’s relationship are genuine and moving. During these brief interludes, the movie finds its feet. Too bad director Brain Kirk and his company didn’t explore this quiet love story rather than produce another tired exercise.
2 Stars
