Review of A Lonely Place to Die (2011) by Michael J — 07 Jan 2014

This film's first half was definitely better than the second half. I found that the film, when focusing on some very real fears during the rock climbing sections, fear of heights or fear of your equipment malfunctioning, and I thought that was really cool.

On top of that, you have these men trying to murder this group of people who're just trying to do the right thing, even if the situation is more complicated than they originally imagined. It had good tension.

And I think the film lost sight of that once it started bringing in other elements, like Darko and the group of mercenaries his employer hired to find the people that kidnapped his daughter. They handle this group mysteriously at first, but once Alison and Ed make it back to civilization with the girl, the movie becomes a generic hostage thriller.

It completely forgot what made it good in the first place and it switched to something that wasn't nearly as good as it was before. It also became very apparent, during the last 20 minutes or so, that the film had a minuscule budget.

There was just something very noticeable about it, something that wasn't there when they were in the mountains. I think the film became too focused on its action and I didn't find that it looked particularly good.

Overall, though, this film was a pretty good one with some very big flaws that keep it from being better. It still has some very good tension and some decent acting. I just found that the third act wasn't that good.