Big Game
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Victor Garber, Mehmet Kurtulus, Ted Levine and Jim Broadbent
screenplay by
written and directed by Jalmari Helander
Rating: ♦◊◊◊◊
This is a Finnish film about a 13-year-old boy, Oskari (Onni Tommila), sent into the woods by his father to hunt and come back with - anything. It’s his right of passage into manhood with a hunting knife and a heavy-duty bow and arrows. Oskari’s father and other adult hunters from his town are waiting at their base camp for his return the next day. They are a scruffy, tough group of Finnish woodsmen. While Oskari is out there the U.S. President, William Moore (Samuel Jackson), flies overhead on his way to a conference in Helsinki. But his plane is blown out of the sky. The President escapes in an escape capsule - is that real? - and the boy finds him. The President is alone with Oskari for a night and a day while Navy Seal rescuers are dispatched to the crash site. Oskari fails to bag any wildlife, but he returns to his father with the President of the United States, so that’s okay.
There’s more going on than that. The President was targeted by an Arab psychopath, Hazar. He’s not a terrorist, he’s a hunter who wants to kill the biggest game in the world, to hunt a human being but not just any human being - the most powerful human being in the world. It turns out that Hazar is backed by a secret traitorous plot by President Moore’s Vice President (Victor Garber) to eliminate him so that he can ascend the Presidency himself. The VP is aided by retired CIA operative Herbert (Jim Broadbent) in an unlikely collaboration.
Despite plenty of exciting explosions and gunfire, I thought the whole thing was pretty dumb. I like Jim Broadbent, but I didn’t like him in this.