Naturaleza salvaje

An example of the inept use of a three-part structure. This is an example of a montage that is a disorderly juggling of the past and the present. The very idea of investigating economic crimes and the disappearance of a key informant is intriguing, but it is implemented and written in the worst traditions of the detective genre: not prescribed characters and, as a result, lackluster roles with superficial dialogues; stupid plot decisions justifying circumstances. The screenwriter "turns off" smartphones and forgets about the compass to justify lost tourists; tourists quarrel over the map like children, and as a result, the map floats downstream, and a girl from the group tries to fish it out of the water, flounders in the water and bruises her head. In the stream! The stream is knee deep! Just think, the girl went with the flow for a few seconds and got a head injury... how? The director did not bother to show it, just put the viewer in front of the fact.

The stupidest thing is how the group navigated on the map - without a compass, visually looking around. Are you serious? Only a schoolboy can come up with such nonsense, but the director seriously continues to confuse with the absurdity of what is happening, straining with alarming notes. I am simply amazed at how much human and material resources have been invested in this ridiculous theater of "forced losses" with empty chatter and women's screams. "Women's screams" is a directorial technique that is used wherever possible and where it is not necessary. I don't like the slang definition of "stuffy", but in this characteristic designation it corresponds to the content - it's shrill, stuffy, boring constructive junk. The director is unable to organize the acting, he does not see falsehood, does not know how to place accents, does not understand the material, and this misunderstanding is reflected in the viewer. It's a pity for Eric Ban, he has the image of an intelligent man, but in this film his virtues have dissolved into directorial incompetence.

3 out of 4 found it useful. Permanent link.

I saw it by accident: its first week.

A noble idea got destroyed by poor scripting and politically-correct casting. Its big merit was the filming, Australian bush landscapes, but even those scenes had to be moody dull. There was far too much intertwining of timelines and unexplained lines. What body was found? Whose son found the body found by someone else. The lone wolf federal investigator was a Hollywood cliche, as were the classic eyeball confrontation scenes with the notional hero vs the police chief.

What stood out? Debra LF as Jill: an incongruous character in the plot, and with a mismatched husband, but still a great performance.

Do what I did: see it at a theatre which lets you brin in wine in a glass.

A sequel to 2021's sleeper hit The Dry, Force Of Nature: The Dry 2 once again follows brooding detective Aaron Falk where after his informant (Anna Torov) gets lost in the forest on a work retreat he joins a search and rescue team to help find her. Along the way he's forced to confront more of his childhood trauma.

Unfortunately the title for this movie sets the stage for what is a pretty convoluted and muddled movie and is overall a step down in my opinion compared to the first. There are three competing storylines here, the group of women, Aaron's trauma from his past and a serial killer subplot that literally goes nowhere. All of these storylines compete for attention but in the end they all end up falling flat. Also with the exception of Eric Bana as Falk almost every other character in this movie is unlikable (with maybe the only other exception being Mortal Kombat's Sisi Stringer.) With so much going on here it's surprising how unsatisfying and bland this movie was. Five stars for Bana though who is pretty much the only reason this might be worth your time.

Jane Harper wrote a third and final Aaron Falk book that was published last year so I feel like it's inevitable that it also gets adapted to make a trilogy out of this. Hopefully it's more in line with the first movie compared to this and it can finally give Bana's Aaron Falk some sense of happiness because the amount of past and present trauma he's endured throughout both Dry movies is kind of crazy.

I rather liked The Dry, although I didn't rate it (or the book on which it was based) as much as most Australians, so I had quite high hopes for this one.

Alas, they were dashed almost as soon as the film began. The overblown, portentous music was set my Dud Alert quivering, and it was all downhill from there. Ridiculously over complicated plot with about four separate strand running at once, none of which were really resolved satisfactorily, and a couple of them not at all. I pitied the actors who had to deliver what must be some of the clunkiest lines of dialogue ever written, and perhaps the poor quality of the screenplay explains why the performances were so uniformly poor; even Eric Bana, who's an excellent actor, is terrible in this.

Just don't bother. There are far better ways to spend your time.

I have read 'The Dry' and 'Force of Nature' and now have seen both movies.

I believe 'Force of Nature' is a stand alone movie. The negative reviews nearly put me off seeing this one. You don't need to understand anything about 'The Dry' to understand that Aaron Falk is part of the federal police.

It was clever when going back 30 odd years, that the quality of the film was grainy.

The cinematography is beautiful and whilst some of the writing is a bit clunky, overall it's a movie worth seeing on the big screen. I enjoyed the performances by Eric Bana and Anna Torv who always deliver.

It certainly makes you aware of how easily you can get lost in bush.