The Gorge - An Enjoyable Combination of Love Story with Some Intense Action Sequence

I only saw this movie last night after my weekend vacation out of town with my wife. It was released by AppleTV+ during Valentine's day which I thought was a bit funny considering other streaming was promoting their line up for romance/romantic comedy genre. Anyway, I'll just get on with it then.

Brief Story Line

Levi Kane (Miles Teller - Top Gun: Maverick, Fantastic Four 2015 version etc), a sniper with terrific record was hired by mysterious woman called Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver - Avatar: The Way of Water, Alien etc) for a seemingly simple job. He was to be stationed in an unknown location to be guardian of a large building called the Gorge for a year, replacing the previous guard named J. D (Sope Dirisu - Mr. Malcolm's List, Gangs of London TV series etc). There was another Gorge on the East side which was guarded by Lithuanian elite sniper named Drasa (Anya Taylor-joy - Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Menu etc) while Levi was on the West side. 

In the next few months, Levi and Drasa started to know and gain trust from one another, especially when they started to see what they were guarding against. However, when an incident happened during one of the days, both of them realized they could no longer be ignorant of things under the valley and decided to take matters in their own hands. 

So what would happen to Levi and Drasa? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

When I saw a bit of its trailer, I felt this film would be a full action kind which made me interested. While the opening scene was not exactly spectacular, it was still quite OK and showed a bit of the high set of skill the lead character had. Subsequently the story moved in a steady pace with some introduction of other characters and explanation on the Gorge. And then we were shown the start of interaction between Drasa and Levi which actually seemed pretty sweet. Now this is the part where I thought was the reason for the movie shown on Valentine's Day. In fact although the movie was categorized as sci-fi action horror, but in the end, this felt like a love story combined with action.

Even though it took around half hour to get to interesting scene and later some build up on the two's relationship, somehow it did not bore me. And after some time, the movie sprung to real life with well executed action sequence. To my surprise, the special effects were awesome and looked really good. I am not too sure the budget for this film, but I gather it would not be too small with those effects. Anyway, those action scenes were entertaining for me especially the part involving the jeep which was intense. The climax was very nice as well with an ending that I personally liked.

The cast in this movie were really small with Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-joy being the lead, although Sigourney Weaver's character was not that greatly written (could have been played by any other person). I liked the chemistry of the two main characters here as it did not seemed forced and came quite naturally, plus Anya Taylor-joy seemed suitable for this role while Miles Teller felt charming enough. In addition to those names, there was only 1 more character worth mentioning, i.e. Drasa's father Erikas (William Huston). The film itself was directed by Scott Derrickson (Black Phone, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc) and written by Zach Dean (The Tomorrow War, Fast X etc). From what I read, it was part of the Black List for year 2020 (I wrote briefly about this in another movie that was also produced from the list, titled Flight Risk). It has a rather long duration of 2 hours 7 minutes including closing credits but there was no mid or post end credit scene. I also believe this is a film that does not require any sequel.

Btw, there were few nice songs playing in the background and the sound effect was very decent to my opinion. It might be great to see this in large screen cinema with good sound system, but I still enjoyed it even though I saw this on my TV. In the end, this is an entertaining movie for me with a nice combination of romance and action. It's not a light comedy action and it had a rather dark tone but not too bleak. I rather disagree to few critics who mentioned it to be ridiculous or felt like an unsuccessful experiment on mash-up. In fact, I think it was a creative thing to do instead of the usual genre. Though it might not be having a deep plot line, but still it was enjoyable. So if you are looking for a kind of romantic love story combined with some intense action sequence, then you are welcome to give it a try. But if you prefer a light action comedy, or romantic comedy for your Valentine's Day. then this definitely would not be to your liking. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars