The Plot

On the eve of his 13th birthday, Oskari (Onni Tommila) is sent into the Finnish woodlands alone to capture and kill the biggest game he can find. But, when the President of the USA (Samuel L Jackson) drops out of the sky after an attack on Air Force One, these two unlikely allies must join together to survive the night and evade capture from the terrorists in search of them.

The Good

When you’ve got Samuel L Jackson playing the President of the United States of America in a Finnish action movie, there’s not much that can go wrong. And when it’s directed by the same man who brought a Santa Clause horror movie to our screens (Jalmari Helander – Rare Exports) the hands you’re in become even safer.

Big Game is everything you would expect from an action film whose main selling point is that Samuel L Jackson IS the President. It’s big, loud and a huge amount of fun. Whether it be Jim Broadbent pottering around the typical response bunker eating a cheese sandwich while trying to save the president, or Jackson himself giving his usual Jackson-esque reactions to utterly absurd idea of a plot line that unfolds in front of your eyes – at one point he even screams the thing we’re all thinking; ‘we gon’ die!’ . There are enough nuggets of pure undiluted entertainment peppered throughout this insane film to ensure your time isn’t wasted.

The whole film feels like a loving throwback to early action films like Die Hard and even more recent examples such as White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. The main antagonist (Mehmet Kurtulus) in particular feels at times that he could be a distant relative of Alan Rickman’s iconic Hans Gruber, giving off the same airs and graces that Rickman did in his performance. Which leads us to one of the film’s few downfalls…

The Bad

Though Kurtulus does bring an incredibly suave performance to the screen, he is nowhere near as developed a villain as someone like Rickman’s Gruber. Of course, topping one of the best villain performances of 80s action movies is hard to do. Though Kurtulus plays a villain impressively described as an ‘apolitical heir to wealth’, a man who believes in nothing and follows no one, the film does’t quite do enough to show this during his modest screen time.

The Ugly Truth

One glance at the poster for Big Game and you know what you’re in for, big boisterous fun with touches of humour.  Those that accept the film for what it is may just and enjoy the ride, might just find themselves eager for a seemingly inevitable sequel as the final credit role

Review by Johnny Ellis