Charlize’s Angles: Theron seeks a vertical foothold for an Aussie Deliverance…
Sasha and her Australian husband Tommy are experienced climbers and thrill-seekers but halfway up a snow-topped Norwegian mountain things go wrong and send Sasha’s life spiraling.
Seeking time away from the mountainous peaks, she sets out to find both a different challenge and some inner peace in Tommy’s homeland attempting to navigate the trails and wild river systems of Wandarra National Park.
But after experiencing intimidation from some hunters, she takes some advice from a more friendly local named Ben who directs her to a tougher but more satisfying route. When she wakes in her makeshift campsite, she finds most of her belongings and tools gone and it seems she’ll have to rely on Ben to get out.
However, Ben’s motives are less than altruistic and Sasha is about to find out just how well he knows the untamed territory around them… and how far she will go to survive…
*some spoilers*
The film industry might have a maxim that ‘no-one knows anything’ when it comes to the roadmap for success, but there are some well-trodden trails along the way, even if you insist on chasing waterfalls once in a while. Create a tension-filled story, add solid, talented leads, pick a picturesque location and… action! The rest will surely take care of itself? That’s a reasonably good cliff-notes approach and though it doesn’t always guarantee the peaks, it does give you a compass.
So, while its one-word, throwaway title doesn’t immediately inspire all-out confidence and APEX‘s story certainly won’t win any awards for originality… there’s still hope of a good thriller.
The latest Netflix feature-length outing hits almost all the requisite beats that the genre demands: a template screenplay but driven onwards with gusto by its two main stars, actors who have a proven record and can make good use of physical action and selected uncomfortable silences and micro-expressions. The plot? From the outset, we get a prologue (with Eric Bana as Tommy) that is so defiantly tropey that I defy you not to know what’s coming. Thereafter it’s a PTSD game of cat-and-mouse that relies less on the set-up than the style and execution.
If that sounds like the build-up to a negative review, it’s also fair to say that APEX already knows its survival plan and dutifully delivers. If it’s by the numbers, it intends to make each of them count and it helps to have someone like Charlize Theron doing that counting.
As is usually the case, Theron fully commits to the role. She’s a striking and talented actor who can play both stunningly refined and down-and-distressed as a role requires. She can handle Oscar-winning projects and tough emotional roles and can also deliver on the the high-end action front. The character of Sasha is the kind Theron could deftly deliver in her sleep but she’s all-in. Logic says that the stunt team and stand-ins on APEX must have earned their money on such a rough and tumble project and that post-production can work wonders, but it’s also very clear that the actor was genuinely in the midst of the action for a lot of the scenes and physically capable of handling everything thrown her way. You can virtually feel Theron fighting her way to the surface of the river’s raging torrent and her finger-nails gripping the minute crevices of the cliff-face for purchase in several of the key scenes. It’s those moments that sing.
Kingsman / Rocketman‘s Taron Edgerton swaps his British (Welsh) accent for an impressive Aussie cadence and makes ‘Ben’ a genuinely creepy antagonist – albeit a character whose true characteristic is sheer, sneering menace once it’s revealed. Initially he appears as a Good Samaritan, especially when compared to some stereotypical leering, backwoodsmen types that Sasha also encounters early on, but there’s a serpentine quality that Edgerton delivers that shifts from awkward to unnerving then unhinged…. all of no surprise for anyone who’s seen the trailer or knows the basic premise.
We are slowly given some of Ben’s backstory, elements that deliver menace and chills and perhaps just a flicker of sympathy for what unspoken element really set things in motion, but it’s more about what he’s done before, leading up rather than the trigger for them. It’s also interesting to note that its Edgerton who gets the nude scene here rather than Theron, so no-one can doubt his commitment either.
Director Baltasar Kormákur, who made the more acrid landscape of South Africa breathable in 2022’s Beast with Idris Elba, certainly brings the New South Wales area to life, filming away from public trails and twisting the camera through picturesque tall peaks, slim canyons and fast-moving rapids. Arguably, it’s hard to go wrong when nature gives you such locations, but the cinematography succeeds in being claustrophobic and expansive and inducing vertigo as needed between its sweeping vistas which might have had even more power if this was an IMAX screen and not Netflix. (Though there are plenty of genuine of great official Parks in Australia, the story takes place in the fictional Wandarra National Park. The actual locations used include the Blue Mountains that have their edge only a few hours outside Sydney – and I can personally vouch for the area being wild and beautiful up close, though there’s no such dynamic rivers running through there).
There are moments where the film starts to fall foul of one of the flipsides of movies about female empowerment: the cinematic torture they must apparently go through to see it realised. Crawling, bloodied and battered, there’s moments of sadistic brutality – particularly against Sasha, that aren’t so much graphic as just simply unpleasant in their sheer emotional and physical cruelty. Yes, Ben ultimately gets a share of the pain in return, but there’s still something in the inequality. Equally the pace falters as Ben’s game-plan seems to fluctuate according to the needs of the moment (it initially appears to be a variation on The Most Dangerous Game, then looks for Deliverance and then… well, you’ll see…) and some internal continuity/travel logic might also distract if you give it too much of a consideration.
While I’m not sure that my Australian friends will appreciate the stereotypes on show any more than Georgia’s tourism industry embraced Deliverance, APEX likely proves a good enough action outing for most viewers. It won’t stay with you nor is its streamlined story set to be a genre classic, but it is an effective 95 minutes of genuine tension and beautiful backdrops where the cast carry the load and familiarity doesn’t breed contempt…and it ultimately delivers exactly what the trailer promised. Sometimes. that’ll do nicely…
8.5/10
APEX is now on Netflix…