Michael Douglas…hunting big game
“BEYOND THE REACH” My rating: B-
95 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Our worst suspicions about the One Percent are realized in “Beyond the Reach,” an outdoor thriller with Michael Douglas doing a murderous variation on his Oscar-winning Gordon Gekko character from “Wall Street.”
Douglas plays John Madec, a ridiculously wealthy and probably sociopathic master of industry who shows up in a small burg on the edge of the Mojave Desert looking for a hunting guide. After 10 years Madec has finally gotten a rare government license to bag a Bighorn sheep, the one animal whose head is missing from his trophy wall.
The local sheriff (Ronny Cox) suggests he hire Ben (Jeremy Irvine), barely out of his teens but an expert guide and tracker thanks to the outdoor education provided by his late parents. Ben is immediately put off by Madec’s crude cockiness, but he can’t turn down the $1,000-a-day pay.
Once in the vast barren landscape of blistered flatlands and sweeping mesas (the film was shot in the Four Corners area), things quickly go wrong. Madec gets his kill…only it isn’t a sheep.
Ion the midst of a huge business deal conducted over a satellite phone, Madec cannot afford the bad publicity the incident will surely generate (though didn’t Dick Cheney survive a similar mishap?) His scheme is to blackmail Ben for the death — and to make sure there are no loose ends he forces his young companion to disrobe and start walking across the desert.
Butler's Cinema Scene 