(Spoilers.) Towards the end of his life, Sir Laurence Olivier (22 May 1907 – 11 Jul 1989), said to have been one of Great Britain's great thespians, was known, during his final years of life and declining health, to take pretty much every half-way decently paying project that came his way — The Betsy (1978 / trailer), anyone? — ostentatiously because he had "devoted himself to making money for his children and grandchildren" [Harvard Crimson]. The thrice-married thespian was/is hardly a rarity in his desire to rake in the dough before going six feet under.
More recently, the twice-married Bruce Willis, prior to and during his decent into dementia, pretty much did the same thing, filling his probably already healthy bank account with bucks earned from headlining (but shot-in-two-days) appearances in a plethora of third- and fourth-rate "geezer teasers" — Assassin (2023 / trailer) or Wrong Place (2022 / trailer) or White Elephant (2022 / trailer) or A Day to Die (2022 / trailer) or Survive the Game (2021 / trailer) or Out of Death (2021 / trailer) or Cosmic Sin (2021 / trailer), anyone? — before, well, he got to the point that 2-million-dollar, 15-minute parts were no longer an option.
Trailer to
Force of Nature:
Over at imdb, if one is to believe the current (accessed: 12 June 23) entries found in the Trivia section for Force of Nature — and seeing that Force of Nature is a Randall Emmett production, the purported trivia is surely true — it would seem that this film was one of the movies that Bruce Willis was set, but ultimately became unable, to do a 15-minute, headlining appearance. And so the glorified (we would think) one-day-shoot part of Ray, a gruff and tuff terminally ill former cop, was scooped up by Mel "Fecund & Sober but Bipolar" Gibson (of the still watchable Mad Max [1979 / trailer] and poorly aged Road Warrior [1981 / trailer]), who can pretty much do gruff and tuff with his eyes closed.*
* Mel "Judge Ye Not Lest Yet Ye Be Judged" Gibson's career still hasn't fully recovered from his infamous DUI, anti-Jew tirade of 2006 and domestic "problems" with his ex-gal Oksana Grigorieva (of Beyond the Game [2016 / trailer]) of 2010, but ever since he had the balls to be willing to support of Jane Doe #3 in her testimony against Harvey Weinstein, we here at a wasted life have decided that, since he gives us such a noticeable case of beard-envy, we are willing to watch projects in which his character has a beard. (Movies with mullets, however, were and still are a no-go.)
Nine-time-father
Gibson, in any event, does do his rather pointless character both well
enough and with his eyes wide open, but neither his innate charisma nor the
narrative of the film itself are able to hide the obvious: Ray is
probably the most pointless character in this less-than-involving,
disjointed, by-the-numbers, occasionally laughable and definitely
pointless, bullet-heavy action thriller.
Oksana Grigorieva is Pissed
(but not talented):
Set in Puerto Rico (probably equally for the tax credits offered and the chance to get some rays in the sun between shoots), Force of Nature plays out mostly within a boarded-up apartment building during a major hurricane. The few residents that haven't evacuated — namely Ray (Gibson), his doctor-daughter Troy (Kate "Director's Wife" Bosworth*), Afro-stud-muffin Griffin (William Catlett), and aged "I Was Never A Nazi but Those War-Booty Paintings Are Mine" Bergkamp (Jorge Luis Ramos) — and the two cops sent to evacuate them (namely, "I Have A Tragic Story" Cardillo [Emile Hirsch**] and hot tamale Jess Pena [Stephanie Cayo, below not from the film]), have something worse than a hurricane to deal with when a gang of ruthless, heavily armed gangsters arrive on the scene, hot to get their hands on a catch of long-missing masterpieces (as in paintings).
* Remember her? She played Lois Lane in the Superman film everyone prefers to forget, Superman Returns (2006 / trailer), and is one of the many faces in the hilariously tasteless Movie 43 (2013 / trailer), an unjustly vilified comedy that everyone we have forced to watch has loved — indeed, our DVD remains in perpetual rotational loan.
** Remember him? Probably not, but he's as miscast here as he was in Speed Racer (2008 / trailer) and once again proves that his forte is character roles (see: the well-made but dreadfully overrated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood [2019 / trailer]) and not headlining parts... though he has pretty good in Freaks (2019 / trailer).
In what appears to be his first filmscript for a feature-length movie, scriptwriter Cory Miller seems to have been in way over his head, as the narrative of Force of Nature is more than lacking. In an attempt to add an a redemption angle to the events of the movie (and to pad the running time), he saddles Emile Hirsch's character Cardillo with a tragic past, the events of which (without the money shot of a dead body) transpire in NYC at the opening of the film. Basically, as one already expects when Cardillo tells his hot rookie partner and fiancée Jasmin (Jasper "Director's Daughter" Polish of Some Kind of Hate [2015 / trailer]) to stay in the car and call for backup while he looks for the person with a gun, he shoots himself single by the time-padding interlude's fade-out.
And thus it transpires that he, a broken man, ends up working as a desk-reception cop in Puerto Rico, where all broken cops go to work. There, one stormy day, when all cops are put on the streets, he has an unexpected chance at redemption and a new, somewhat more mature blonde (Bosworth). In between, the bad guys blow-up doors, shoot people dead, and even die themselves over the course of the extremely unevenly paced flick with some oddly drawn-out scenes...
Oh, yeah, before we forget: scriptwriter Miller even throws a man-eating tiger into the unexciting mix. It ends up being a visual punchline towards the end of this well-shot but snoozer of a movie. Unluckily, a joke as forced as this one is never funny — unlike the absolutely hilarious (but intended as serious) escape that doctor-daughter Troy and Afro-stud-muffin Griffin do off-screen around the same time in the movie.
Force of Nature may be director Michael Polish's 11th film, but despite his experience and occasionally music-video flashiness, the movie never gets close to living up to the promise of its title. Most of the time, it plays out and feels like an overlong episode of some relatively generic TV cop show. Anyone expecting that the title might be an oblique reference to Gibson's character is likewise due to be disappointed. Indeed, as diligent and preserving as the diverse characters are, none come close to being a force of nature — and even the hurricane itself gets downgraded over the course of the movie. About the only force of nature that the viewer has to contend with when watching this film is the overwhelming desire to fall asleep, as for all the bullets and occasional flashiness and oddly unthrilling action scenes and whatever else, the movie remains spectacularly yawn-inducing.
Decades ago, in the fun days of grindhouse, a movie like this would have had the redeeming features of stuff like spurting blood and flying body parts and a lot of gratuitous nudity. Force of Nature, however, made, as it was, totally in line with today's prudery and overwhelming desire not to offend, has none of those cheaply gratifying aspects. And thus it remains little more than a dull and unmemorable waste of time. You really don't need to bother with this wheezing geezer of a flick.
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