Force of Nature: Oltre l'inganno

Not as good as the first film ...I think , mainly because the missing lady , was annoying and unpleasant , just couldn't feel anything for her ... Otherwise , not bad ...Kind of satisfied the urge I have lately to return to the old fashioned style of cinematography , when films were more about character development and acting than special effects and non stop action . This film ,definitely , achieves that : there was almost no violence or fights or car chases, or , for that matter -casual nudity or sex . That's why for me it was a pleasant reminder of the days once and for all gone ... I mean , I love some crazy action , but sometimes just want to sit quietly and enjoy a bit of a cerebral thriller )

5 women embark on a company team building exercise, backpacking for 3 days into the forest. However only 4 return and a search is quickly launched for the 5th, Alice, played by the excellent Anna Torv. Enter detective Falk (Eric Bana) who needs to find Alice as she has been working undercover in the company for Falk in an attempt to expose fraud by bad guy Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh).

Sequel to 'The Dry', which whilst not as good as the original is still an enjoyable watch. What director Robert Connolly does is to almost seamlessly intertwine Falk's investigation with flashbacks to what the group did. In most films this is done in large chunks, but here it moves more quickly, neatly shifting from one timeline to the other merging them into one. The 5 women make for a good team playing nicely off each other, mixing truth and lies to Falk and us, with Bana solid and sincere, thinking back to backpacking in his youth which lead to a tragedy and Roxburgh, ideal as the cocky slime ball. Worth catching.

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.

I found this movie to be really well done. The music, acting, writing, plot and overall STYLE is terrific.

There is a lot going on - several underlying plots and backstories. I won't spoil anything for you, but I'll give you a leg up on the backstory:

Alice works for a powerful law firm or accounting firm (or something) that launders money for powerful international criminals.

Her daughter had bullied another girl at their exclusive prep school, and the school had threatened to kick the girl out. Alice then stole money from her work and "donated" it to the school in order to keep her daughter from getting kicked out.

Eric Bana is a policeman who focuses on financial crimes, and he had caught Alice stealing the money. So now, Alice is an informant for Bana, and if Alice stops cooperating, Bana will make sure everybody finds out about her theft and she'll either go to jail or get killed by the crooked people she works for.

Then, Alice goes on a team-building hiking/camping trip with 4 other people she works for, and she disappears.

That's where the movie starts.

My wife and I just picked it sort of at random out of the gigantic number of movies on all of our streaming services, but we were very pleasantly surprised.

Every once in a while you just stumble upon a gem, and this definitely qualifies.