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| Directed by Stewart Raffill; Starring Daniel Clark, Bryan Brown, Ton Jackson, Oliver Tobias, and Richard Harris |
Grizzly Falls is yet another one of those “backwoods, good ole time” films that I’m forced to see in my impending quest to see every film that opens in 1999. I hate to say it, but I am really weary of these films. They are poorly directed, written, and acted. They are also only directed at one type of person and I evidently do not meet the requirements to be such a person. Look at Southern Heart, or even more so, Hunter’s Moon. These films are degrading, cloying attempts at filmmaking without an inch of knowledge in proper film storytelling. Such is easily the case with Grizzly Falls.
The film is about Henry (Clark), a young man whose mother has died without the side of her country-hopping husband Tyrone (Brown). When Tyrone returns, he decides to take Henry out on a hunting trip with him. They are going to humanely hunt bears, by using drugs to put the grizzlies to sleep. After Tyrone sanctions some hunters to help him, they find a problem in the fact that one of the hired is out for blood (Tobias). They capture two bear cubs and that night the mother bear comes and kidnaps Henry (far fetched enough for you?). Tyrone and his best friend Joshua (Jackson) set out in the mountains to find the bear and the lost son, fearing for Henry’s life. Of course as one can guess, the bear and Henry become dear friends and begin looking out for each other.
The film is pretty bad. There is some nice scenery, but that is about it. I usually like Richard Harris in films like Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, but here he is chewing up the scenery as the narrator. The direction and story are pretty bad. Of course what would you expect from Stewart Raffill, the man that brought us The Philadelphia Experiment, Across the Great Divide, Mac and Me, Tammy and the T-Rex, and (my favorite) Mannequin 2: On the Move.
