A Revlock Review: BEYOND THE REACH

“Beyond the Reach” Exists Within the Realm of Ridiculous

By Tinsel & Tine Contributor – Mikhail Revlock

We meet Ben (Jeremy Irvine), a stolid young tracker with side-swept hair and squinty eyes, in the thick of a tentative breakup. His girlfriend has grown weary of their staid life in the Mojave Desert. It appears that there are only so many times you can skinny-dip in a cave pool before you start to long for more intellectual pleasures. The same day she sets sail for a distant college, Ben receives word of a potential client looking to bag a longhorn sheep. Madec (Michael Douglas) is a silver-haired businessman in a cowboy hat and aviators. He exudes that Michael Douglas-esque air of sleazy volatility. His hunting papers are suspect, but he has a lot of bribing money to throw around—his espresso machine-equipped Humvee straddles two spots in the adjacent lot—and Ben’s boss coerces him into escorting the shady mogul. Soon the two men are trundling over sand dunes and urinating in unison.

The stage is set for a May-December buddy comedy.

Their easygoing rapport—best encapsulated by a scene in which they quote Wall-E at one another—is shattered when Madec mistakes a mountain man for a longhorn and fires a bullet through his gut. Fearing that the accident could jeopardize a forthcoming merger, Madec hits the innocent bystander with a death blow, tries to buy Ben’s silence, and proceeds to frame him for the murder, when our noble hero refuses his offer. “Why didn’t Madec just kill him?” is one of many questions the skeptical viewer will ask himself after this ludicrous film arrives at its mindboggling conclusion. Furthermore: “Why did Madec make him strip to his boxers and run around the desert all day?”

It’s the only humane solution.

The foremost priorities of Beyond the Reach are to promote the staggering vistas of the Mojave and the washboard abs of Jeremy Irvine. If one drank a shot for every frame that contained neither of these properties, he would emerge from this film stone-sober. It is unfortunate that Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, helming his first American feature, did not invest his energy in drawing strong performances from his actors. Every line-reading smacks of a first take. Irvine acquits himself laughably, but it is Douglas who takes the cake, crying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I KILL YOU!” The septuagenarian actor produced Beyond the Reach. The resulting work is a far cry from his first producing gig.

This One

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It is difficult to go into a film simultaneously released in a handful of theaters and VOD with high expectations. Still I tried to watch “Beyond the Reach” with an open mind, and I was intermittently impressed by the cinematography. Ultimately, however, the lumbering pace, minimal character development, and lamebrain dialogue became impossible to ignore, and it took me three sittings to finish watching my advance screener copy. I’m afraid this is one for die-hard Jeremy Irvine fans only, whoever you are.

T &T’s LAMB Score: 1 outta 5

Mikhail Revlock is a freelance journalist and fiction writer. His hobbies include bicycles, books, and food. A Philadelphia native, he lives in University City with his girlfriend and two cats. Be sure to check out past contributions – Reviews: Run All Night, Jupiter Ascending and “Horrible Bosses” Interviews with “Dear White People” director Justin Simien and Kevin MacDonald “Black Sea”