Sunday, July 20, 2014

Night Drive (2010)

An estranged father and son take a group of tourists out in the African wilderness on a night drive. The father is a tour guide who has been told he must stop stirring up trouble and stop reporting that there are poachers in the woods,. The son is back at the resort to put his mothers ashes in a local river where she loved spending time.

While the tour guide doesn't want to take the tourists out at night  because the poachers are hunting humans, his manager tells him that he'll be fired unless he makes the trip.  Grudgingly he decides to go, but plans on hunting the poachers while on the trip.  No one shall ask how he plans to keep the tourists from being slaughtered.

They stop by a river and the three couples on the tour stretch their legs. But the stop soon turns into a nightmare when they find a body and their guide tells them of the troubles in the area.

The three couples act as anyone else would and demand to get the hell out of there. But of course that would be too easy. So we have a tour guide who wanders off to find the killer, a bus that breaks down, an old man with a heart condition, and an obnoxious bully who's been snorting tons of coke.  It's just not going to work out well for anyone.

This is a bleak movie. There's no real tension, even though the situations should provide it.  For some reason it doesn't work, probably because there's no emotional investment in the characters.  It's just not that interesting and I didn't enjoy watching it.

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