Director: Levan Bakhia
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 110 Minutes
As some of you may know, I have a particular soft spot when it comes to films involving characters trapped in tense or perilous situations. Even if the movie itself isn’t that great, there’s just something fun about watching a bunch of twenty-somethings react to being trapped on a ski lift (Frozen), or in a sauna (247°F), or at an automated teller machine (ATM). Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea; these types of thrillers are my jam.
So when I first heard the premise of Levan Bakhia’s Landmine Goes Click, I was instantly drawn to it. A guy steps on a landmine out in the wilderness and must figure out a way to survive. Sure, this is something we’ve seen before, 2001’s No Man’s Land comes to mind, but it looked entertaining nonetheless and I was digging the poster.
What the poster and trailer don’t indicate however, is that Landmine Goes Click is not really the containment thriller I expected it to be but more so a revenge film that is anything but fun.
The setup is not unlike dozens of horror movies before it. Three Americans travel to a foreign land, in this case Georgia, and have something terrible happen to them. Daniel and Alicia are about to get married, and they head to Georgia with their friend Chris for a camping trip before the ceremony. What Daniel doesn’t know however, is that Chris and Alicia slept together and Chris wants to get it off his chest before the marriage. They quickly have bigger problems to contend with though, as Chris unknowingly steps on a landmine, setting in motion a chain of events that will leave him forever changed.
The premise still sounds interesting right? And the first 15 minutes or so are indeed promising, despite some spotty editing and strange cinematography (and by strange I mean bad), but as soon as a new character called Ilya is introduced, everything begins to unravel. At first Ilya’s presence makes for an interesting shift in the tension, where before it was on the landmine and now it’s on this disgusting Ron Jeremy-looking creature.
Chris can do nothing to aid Alicia or else he’ll blow himself and everyone else up. Unfortunately, this tension shift quickly proves to be the film’s downfall, as it devolves into an I Spit on Your Grave-esque rape-revenge film, completely removing the whole landmine situation for its final act. This might be okay if the characters were likable; or the dialogue wasn’t annoying; or if the cinematography wasn’t constantly floating around as if the whole thing was shot with a drone; or the editing wan’t so sloppy that, in one culminating scene, I had no idea what even transpired because there were so many cuts that I couldn’t tell what happened.
But alas, Landmine Goes Click just ends up being a nasty, ugly film that wastes a decent premise on a poorly constructed and unsatisfying outcome.
