The Last Great Wilderness

Just what this film is supposed to be is beyond me. One man's guess is as good as another's. What was going through the mind of the writer? What's his point? And why put so much effort into a script when there are thousands of unproduced movies out there, desperate for attention. Somehow, amongst the madness of moviemaking, this was greenlighted.

We are introduced to Charlie and Vince right away. They are strangers to each other. One is out to burn his estranged wife's house down. The other is on the run from thugs who want to cut his balls off. Why? Because he slept with another man's wife. Is this an attempt at irony? It doesn't work. How ironic.

The car runs out of petrol in the middle of the Highlands - they came from England and apparently did not pass through any cities, although we are not sure, because the film doesn't fully orientate us. And so Charlie and Vince, who occasionally talks with a Spanish accent, set off on foot until they happen upon an old inn. All they want is gasoline, but the residents make it hard for them to leave.

Me? If I didn't like where I was, I'd hightail it out of there. What's not to like about the weirdo residents? There's an angry man who sits in a box, a sexaholic woman and some others who are too hard to describe. One minute they are cool and the next they are cruel. It's senseless. Why Charlie and Vince stick around, when it's obvious they need to get going, is seriously annoying.

All this film seems to do is annoy. And it fails in almost every other department. The acting is terrible. The direction is anonymous and pedestrian. The sound design is cheap and nasty and, worst of all, the photography is hideous.

The makers obviously thought it merited scope photography. And so we have a widescreen picture - shot on a DV camera. Sorry, that's ugly as sin. This is a student film. The grain and camcorder quality degrade the already poor material to the point of being unwatchable. Also, director David Mackenzie hasn't a clue how to utilise a widescreen frame. How he can film a movie this way and still fail to capture the isolation of the Highlands, or have any moody shots, is plain confusing.

He has made a genreless movie, with no point or moral. There is some, er, "meaningful" dialogue midway through, about how the last great wilderness is not out there, but inside each and every one of us. O so relevant!

Also, totally out of place, we see the ghost of a dead girl every now and again. But this is no ghost story. There is no story. Just an assortment of tedious, worthless scenes taped together for 90 minutes.