Not only The Edge is a survival movie but it’s also an animal attack movie and a character-driven drama. We expected nothing less from the great David Mamet who wrote such masterpieces as Glengarry Glen Ross, Hoffa and Hannibal. Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, are confidently leading the charge with a lot of support from beautiful Elle Macpherson and Harold Perrineau. Working with such a good script, it wasn’t hard for them to flesh out the characters Mamet envisioned. These are not some larger-than-life caricatures but familiar and flawed humans trying to survive a difficult situation.
The clash of young and old, vanity and perspective, it all contributes to the engaging atmosphere in this movie. This could have easily been just another commercial disaster where bear eats them one by one after they start making horrible decisions. If you’re interested in movies where various animals attack humans I recommend you check out Rabbit Reviews natural horror lists. We go over movies about sharks, crocodiles, lions, cockroaches and many more. A list with movies about bears is in the works although there aren’t that many movies featuring these mighty animals.
TV show Survivor premiered in 1997, followed by Survivorman (Les Stroud) and Man vs. Wild (Bear Grylls), marking the beginning of the survival craze. With the erosion of ruling ideology and religion, return to the primitive way of life provides a nice escape from today’s crappy world. In the wilderness, the rules are simple and there are no shortcuts. You can’t cheat your way out of the situation basically and this firm, natural system of values enables your personality to define itself with relative ease. Especially when those primal drives kick in and take control.
Charles Morse is a billionaire with a beautiful wife, his plane, and very dull and bland life. When he travels to Alaska to a photo-shoot, he will have a revelation. After suffering a plane crash, he will have to survive in a hostile environment depending on his encyclopedic knowledge and a small knife along with his two friends.
Shot in the beautiful Canadian wilderness, The Edge is one of those adventure movies that both warns about the dangers in the wild and makes you wanna go there despite them. The cinematography is lush and beautiful, with stunning vistas of dense forests and snow-covered mountain peaks. If you’re looking for similar movies I recommend you check out Backcountry, Into The Wild, Kon-Tiki, Jungle, The Grey and Everest.
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson, Harold Perrineau, L.Q. Jones
Fun Facts: This film inspired a highly successful TV reality show of the same name in Brazil, where participants were selected from normal people, including executives, graduates and clerks, left in a wild and deserted area of Brazilian landscape and had to survive using techniques similar to the ones mentioned by Anthony Hopkins’s character.
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IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119051/
