A Lonely Place to Die

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I blame it on Ripley, believe it or not.  Sigourney Weaver’s gun-totin’, ball-bustin’, space-travelin’ Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise introduced a new type of hero to the action movie:  the kick-ass female.  Weaver’s ballsy character led to Catwoman and Lara Croft and, inevitably, some far-fetched heroines like the one we meet in A Lonely Place to Die.

And so in this British attempt to cash in on the lucrative action-movie market we get Alison (Melissa George), a supermodel-type who, improbably:  1)  dodges bullets;  2) plunges from mountainous crags down to lethal river rapids;  and 3) out-muscles professional killers in hand-to-hand combat.

Alison is the alpha female in a quintet of mountaineers who, during an outing in the Scottish Highlands, discover a Serbian girl who’s been kidnapped and then buried in a box.  The climbers rescue the girl and are then stalked by the kidnappers, two nasty mercenaries who manage to bump off everyone in the cast except for, naturally, Newt and Rip– … er, Alison and the little girl.

A Lonely Place to Die boasts some spectacular views of the Scottish hills, and director Julian Gilbey handles the physical scenes capably.  Movies like this can be fun, provided the more-ridiculous aspects are coupled with a wink at the audience. But Gilbey and the actors treat the material with dead seriousness, so that by the time Alison outduels a killer who is wearing a pig mask, I wasn’t buying a bit of it.   Grade:  C

 

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Director:  Julian Gilbey  Cast:  Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Eamonn Walker, Sean Harris, Alec Newman, Karel Roden, Kate Magowan, Garry Sweeney, Stephen McCole, Holly Boyd  Release:  2011

 

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                                                         Watch Trailers  (click here)

 

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Above, Melissa George as a mountain climber in A Lonely Place to Die.  Below, Melissa George as mountains in Dark City.

 

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1 comment

  1. Hollywood November 23, 2011 7:14 am  Reply

    Will have to check this one out.

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