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Wonderful character development!

Sadly Over-hyped

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is one of those movies that holds your interest but one that I'm happy I seen it on Netflix and not the theater where it cost me what 3 months of Netflixs. Someone said the couldn't figure out where they had seen Josie (Maisie Williams) and then said it was Lord of the Rings but she wasn't in that. She is in HBO's Game of Thrones though. Like I said it's entertaining but not a huge hit, I gave it a 5 but given that it was most likely a low budget film I think they did a pretty good job. I did learn some things about Hyena's, that both sexes have a penis and the females give birth through it. I think Maisis has a future in movies and they all have to do medium type movies before you start getting larger roles in major films.

First of all - why the hell is Stephen Dorff holding a gun on the cover. He never comes close to a gun and dies 25 minutes in. That in itself is total false advertising. Second, God this movie is terrible. How they can make a movie like this and have it not make sense is an actual achievement. When Dorff dies, the car rolls immediately and stays there. Then Tally finds his body and his daughter Jo. Soon after, the arms dealers come back and bury the body. Where the hell did they go? At first they make it seem that there was a chase or something, and the guys have followed the trail to Dorff's car and body. Yet there is no chase. He dies immediately. Why didn't the guys bury his body and burn the car then? Instead they wander off for reasons unbeknown to us, probably so the writer could somehow get Tally to Jo. Also, Dorff dies in the spot where a great big dead Rhino is. Where the hell did that Rhino go? It isn't there when Tally gets there. In general, the film is a total snore fest. The first part of the movie is totally unnecessary. We didn't need scenes showing them talking about the trip. Why didn't the film just start in Africa? The scenes in America don't add anything to the movie. The rest of the film, when we actual start getting some sort of action, is poorly executed. How a woman that tiny managed to go toe to toe in hand to hand combat with that huge South African guy is beyond me. It is never hinted that she has any sort of training, yet we are just supposed to believe she magically managed to fight him. She jumps on his back and tries to strangle him with a rope. I doubt she'd have had the strength, especially with being so dehydrated. He then punches her twice in the face, stabs her and kicks her when she's down. Yet she somehow manages physically turn the gun round in the guys hand and shoots him. What?! The dynamic between Jo and Tally is cringe worthy and quickly turns into a lifetime movie. At the end they're best buds but you never really get any sense of them bonding and neither has any chemistry with the other. Maisie Williams - who is usually so good in Game of Thrones - is terrible in this. The scene were Jo breaks down and Tally hugs her would have probably been more believable if there was actual tears coming out of her eyes instead of Maisie just scrunching up her face. On top of that, she doesn't look sad - she just looks like there is the sun in her eyes or she has smelt something bad. It feels like she was focusing so much on doing a good American accent that she forgot to act. And then there is the direction. The scene in the camp when Jo realises the guy is part of the arms dealers is shot like a high school play. The three guys stand in a line and sort of talk at each other rather than talking like an actual human being and facing each other. And the angle of the camera is so amateurish I laughed. The chemistry between Dorff and his girlfriend is non-existent. Svetlana Metkina is a terrible actress judging her off of this performance. She says all her lines like she's reading them off of a piece of paper and doesn't seem at all interested. Her tone of voice doesn't change for the entire movie. She sounds exactly the same when she is fighting for her life as she does when she's talking about an Jo's iPad. On top of that, the writer keeps having her talking to herself which is just lazy writing. Peter Stormare can actually do a lot better than this movie and he's usually terrible too. And to top it all off - the finale is totally anti-climactic and wraps it up way too quickly considering we've all just sat through an hour and a half of the protagonists being chased. In the final scene the girls return to where Dorff's body is buried to lay some flowers when surely the authorities would have dug it up to confirm their story and to do an autopsy. And while they are laying flowers, a hyena looks on stoically in what can only be described as the best acting in the movie. Seriously, this is honestly one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Sveta's character is more interesting than meets the eye, plot notwithstanding. Her attitude towards reality and survival was declared in a few, brief bits of dialogue. One scene where she is beating herself up in Russian, feeling guilty for the death of her partner, comes across as a natural emotional response to a horrible event. The second refers to "civil war" as an irrevocable educational crucible, in not so many words, when she is responding to the kid's question about where she learned to recognize something evil. These bits are profound and convey quite a lot of depth and meaning to a character too easily dismissed by a less insightful viewer.

This movie has received strangely bad reviews. I liked it a lot. It has both action, adventure, excitement, interesting characters (especially the resourceful Russian stepmother), beautiful nature scenery, evil crooks and compassionate crooks. You also learn a little about the hyena. It kept me interested all the time! The bad relation between stepmother and stepdaughter in the beginning, is of course classic. It is infested with poison, as they are both female and both love the same man. In reality of course the stepmothers and stepdaughters seldom get such a fantastic opportunity to bond, as in this movie... but it is still worth checking out, if you are a stepmother (or -daughter).