Hunt to Kill (2010)

Hunt to Kill: Directed by Keoni Waxman. With Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Gary Daniels, Marie Avgeropoulos. Steve Austin stars as U.S. Border Patrol agent Jim Rhodes, a tough divorce mourning the loss of his murdered partner while struggling to raise his rebellious daughter in the mountains of Montana. But when a crew of trigger-happy fugitives takes Rhodes and his daughter hostage, a rugged wilderness will explode in all-terrain vengeance. Is there any wounded animal more dangerous than a lawman left for dead?

“And I was generous with three stars, of ten. Explanation to come. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA buddy rented this one and brought it over. Starring the only two known u0026#39;actorsu0026#39; Steve Austin and Eric Roberts (who has stumbled along on his acting career, never approaching his more famous sister Juliau0026#39;s prominence), Hunt to Kill starts out with a familiar formula: Two cop (southern border guard?) buddies, the two already mentioned, staking out a trailer in the desert. Itu0026#39;s desert so it must be the southern US border. They call for backup and then decide to storm the trailer without waiting for the backup to arrive. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAt this point we can see whatu0026#39;s going to happen in this movie. The writer is going to have the characters do totally illogical things because he hasnu0026#39;t taken any care to advance the story in a plausible fashion, and we the audience will spend the rest of the show rolling our eyes saying all the while, u0026#39;Now why on Earth would somebody do that?u0026#39;. The movie delivers.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOf course the bust goes wrong. Eric Roberts must have been expensive because heu0026#39;s only on the screen long enough to get killed. The trailer is full of hidden bad guys and everything blows up in magnificent fashion, leaving only Steve Austin knocked flat but alive.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eNext thing we know itu0026#39;s four years later and Austin has transformed into some sort of Rambo-like master of the forest and now heu0026#39;s in the Pacific Northwest. All the setup with the trailer and the killed partner? It has nothing at all to do with the rest of the movie except maybe to establish that Austin is tough. Oh, and we see him being given a birthday present of a watch with a woven band that can be unravelled into a rope.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story shifts to a group of bad guys who have stolen some bonds and who are not only baby kicking bad but who betray each another at the drop of a hat. They kidnap Austin, actually kidnapping his newly appeared incredibly stupid daughter to force his cooperation in order that he should lead them through the forest to their fellow bad guy who has stolen their stolen bonds (donu0026#39;t ask) and taken off with a guide to sneak into Canada through the forest… (I warned you) The watch with the magic rope band that we expected Austin to use to save the day at some point? At one point the McGuffin (bag of bonds) had fallen off a cliff, Austin volunteers to go get it and just up and produces this magic watch band rope in front of everybody, unwinds it, and heads over the edge! Oh, that twist caught me by surprise! I had a great laugh over the fact that the watch-band rope once unravelled, became a half inch line of a good couple hundred feet in length.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOf course the bad guys betray him, grab the McGuffin, cut the rope so that Austin falls off the cliff, and leave him for dead. Of course heu0026#39;s not dead.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe forest part allows the story to go the way of presenting Austin as Rambo, although he runs through the bush in a very awkward fashion as though he were wearing high heels. We get to enjoy seeing such eye rolling and laughter inspiring events as Austin leaning back against a log in the middle of the forest and discovering a bag slung up into a tree, that contains a compound hunting bow! How handy. You can almost hear the scriptwriter say to himself, u0026quot;Now I want to introduce a hunting bow for Austin, how can I do that?u0026quot; u0026quot;I know, he just finds it in a bag, strung up in a tree!u0026quot; u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMind you, later Austin discards the bow when he has shot all of the arrows. You canu0026#39;t reuse undamaged arrows, it seems.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere are enough scenes to inspire laughter that I didnu0026#39;t pull the DVD out of the player. It was funny enough to keep watching, Iu0026#39;ll give it that. There were some visually stunning scenes shot around the abandoned Brittania copper mine in Southwest British Columbia and cliff scenes obviously shot around nearby Squamish.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI canu0026#39;t give it all away but Iu0026#39;ve said enough I think. Austin has to rescue his daughter before the bad guys can escape with her to Canada. Itu0026#39;s not so awful you canu0026#39;t get a laugh or two, but itu0026#39;s pretty awful.”