Beyond the Reach (2015)

Sorry, this movie sucks

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Ben (Jeremy Irvine) is hard up for cash. He's hired by wealthy, ruthless businessman John Madec (Michael Douglas) to be his hunting guide in the desert. Madec has an expensive new truck with all the gadgets and a high powered modern rifle. However, he doesn't have a permit to hunt the bighorn. He bribes Ben with a wad of cash. He carelessly shoots and kills an old prospector. It's a start of a deadly game as Madec tries to cover up his culpability. He leaves Ben in his underwear to die in the scorching desert.It tries to be a hard-edged modern western. Michael Douglas tries too hard to be the villain which borders on camp at times. He needs to tone down the performance which would elevate the tension. The point is to avoid a B-movie sensibility. This does not do that completely successfully. It could have worked a little better as a strict human hunt. Instead, there are lots of little questionable turns. It could have been better.

I read the book Deathwatch by Robb White back in middle school. I always thought it was a good story that deserved a movie. It wasn't until I saw the trailer for this that I learned this was actually the second adaptation of the book.Beyond the Reach follows Ben, a down-on-his-luck young man who wants to go to college with his girlfriend but can't afford it. He is hired by ruthless businessman Madec who weaseled his way into a bighorn hunting permit. When Madec accidentally shoots a drifter he attempts to cover it up and begins hunting Ben through the desert.The movie is largely faithful to the book. Of course, the book focuses on the inner dialogue of Ben as he struggles to stay alive which is hard to translate to film. The movie at least maintains the psychological part of the story with a few brief moments of "action," wisely keeping it a thriller.Michael Douglas does a terrific job playing the villain. There isn't really much for him to do in the story but he makes every moment he's in much more interesting. Jeremy Irvine also does a great job given that he spends most of the time alone in the desert running around.My only real problem is the ending. (Only paragraph with SPOILERS) The book ends with Ben taking Madec back to town and both are arrested. Both are questioned and the authorities believe Madec's story since Ben's sounds crazier. But then they examine the dead body and find Ben's story is true. The movie tacks on a jail escape scene, that makes little sense, and a scene with Madec breaking into Ben's girlfriend's home ending in a big shootout. The whole movie before then was a psychological thriller and this scene goes against that. Keeping the original ending would have maintained the battle of wits between these two characters.For the most part, I enjoyed the movie. I liked how the book was adapted. I just wish it ended about five minutes earlier than it did.

Sometimes something is not out of reach. Sometimes you wonder how it's possible for someone not to be able to hit something when earlier in the movie that didn't seem to be a problem. And still while the movie tries to break predictability towards the end (which I kind of would have dug, going a different route), in the end it turns out it just used a different way to get to the result everyone should expect.Michael Douglas is mesmerizing even when "being" evil (if you can call it that), though it feels comical at times. Not in the best way possible. It's almost like a theater piece with two men having to survive against many odds ... does it work? Occasionally and there is tension and it is interesting to some degree ...

Review: What a terrible, pointless movie! I'm usually a fan of Michael Douglas films but this one just didn't make any sense to me. He plays a wealthy trophy hunter called Madec, who goes to the Mojave desert to hunt. He hires an experienced young tracker, Ben (Jeremy Irvine) and while they are walking around to find there prey, Madec let's of a shot which kills someone. Madec then starts to panic and he offers the tracker loads of money to keep quiet because he is in the process of closing a big deal and he doesn't want anything to damage his reputation. Whilst deciding what to do with the body, Ben tries to make a distress call to his headquarters which makes Madec angry and he goes to extreme measures to embarrass the boy. He makes him walk through the desert in his shorts, with no water or food and he uses him as a hunting tool by continuously shooting at him. This is were the storyline really didn't make any sense to me. If he wanted him dead, he had loads of chances to shoot him. If he didn't want to shoot him, he could have just left him in the desert to die. I really didn't see the point of the whole movie because Douglas started to get angry because the boy was finding caves with food, water and clothes. So my question remains, why didn't he just kill him. The ending was completely ridiculous because Madec could have easily hired a hit-man to kill Ben with all of his wealth. Anyway, I'm not going to pick out all of the sketchy parts of the script because this film is really not worth the time and effort. For a Michael Douglas movie, the box office takings were also appalling and I personally thought that the performances were also pretty bad so it's really has to go down as a bad day at the office. Disappointing!Round-Up: Michael Douglas, 71, has been at the top of the movie game for some time, so it's surprising when he stars in a low budget, straight to DVD movie, which he hasn't done in some time. He recently starred in Ant-Man, which happens to be the highest grossed movie that he has ever been in, with a whopping $410million at the box office, before it's DVD release. Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction and Disclosure are also big money earners for Douglas and I doubt that you will be surprised to know that this movie is his lowest grossed movie of all time. He's only made around 45 movies in his career which have grossed over $3Billion at the box office and he's due to star alongside Orlando Bloom, John Malkovich, Toni Collette and Noomi Rapace in Unlocked, so he can put this terrible movie behind him. This is the first English speaking movie from director Jean-Baptiste Leonitti. Although I been slating film, I think it's a combination of things that made it a disaster, so I won't totally put the blame on him. After reading the script, I'm surprised that Michael Douglas went ahead with the project because the whole thing needed a rewrite. Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: $282,000I recommend this movie to people who are into their thrillers starring Michael Douglas and Jeremy Irvine. 2/10