Movie Review: Apex (2026)

Genre: Survival Action Thriller  

Director: Baltasar Kormákur  

Starring: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: Adventurer Sasha (Charlize Theron) loses her mentor Tommy (Eric Bana) in a rock climbing mishap in Norway. Five months later, a still-grieving Sasha enters a remote Australian park for a solo kayaking adventure. After being warned that hikers frequently disappear in the area, she tangles with a group of uncouth hunters and meets helpful local Ben (Taron Egerton). But deep in the park and on her own, Sasha's next encounter with Ben is less friendly, and she is plunged into a desperate quest for survival in unforgiving terrain. 

What Works Well: The unrelenting fight-for-life mixes elements from Deliverance and The River Wild, and features a constant sequence of thrills, narrow escapes, and breathless chases. Director Baltasar Kormákur maintains brisk pacing, while glorious cinematography by Lawrence Sher captures both natural beauty and epic literal cliff-hangers. Charlize Theron (who also co-produced) stays within herself as a stoic outdoor adventurer, and Taron Egerton ensures Ben is a memorably unhinged villain.

What Does Not Work As Well: Most of the plot points are recycled from previous movies, and more background character texture would have helped to round both Ben and Sasha into more than just hunter and hunted. Some of the close-quarters narrow escape sequences are prolonged to the point of exhaustion.

Key Quote:

Park Ranger (to Sasha): You're going in alone? I wouldn't recommend it.

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Movie Review: The Dry (2020)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: Robert Connolly  

Starring: Eric Bana, Genevieve O'Reilly  

Running Time: 117 minutes  

Synopsis: Melbourne-based federal agent Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) returns to his rural home town of Kiewarra to attend the funeral of his childhood friend Luke, who died along with his wife and son in an apparent murder-suicide. With the area suffering from extreme drought and all the farmers struggling financially, Luke's parents plead with Aaron to investigate the deaths. Flashbacks recall Aaron and Luke's carefree teenage years with friends Gretchen and Ellie, which end in a tragedy that drives Aaron away and under a dark cloud. In the present, he rekindles a relationship with Gretchen (Genevieve O'Reilly), and his sleuthing uncovers a web of possible motives surrounding the death of Luke and his family.

What Works Well: This Australian production adapts the Jane Harper novel into slow-burning but always engaging dual mysteries unfolding a generation apart. A sun-drenched environment starved for water creates a sweltering setting, director Robert Connolly and cinematographer Stefan Duscio capturing wide open but parched farmlands where the cracks in the soil hide secrets and resentments. Eric Bana is a stoic presence, holding back on engaging at the emotional level as he probes the locals, many of whom blame him for a community calamity from the past.

What Does Not Work As Well: Given all the investment in character, mood, and milieu, the third act revelations are rushed. Some weapon-and-ammunition details related to the family killings are bungled, suggesting a slipshod initial investigation. For all his circumspect care in questioning the locals, Aaron has an awkwardly contrived encounter with Gretchen seemingly designed to impose a boulder upon their path to romance.

Key Quote:

Gretchen (to Aaron): You of all people should be minding your own business.

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Movie Review: Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

A demonic horror movie about a series of disturbing deaths, Deliver Us From Evil creates a strong sense of dread but spends too much time fumbling in the dark.

In Iraq of 2010, three United States Marines stumble into a hidden cave and encounter something horrific.

Three years later in the Bronx, New York Police Special Operations Sergeant Ralph Sarchie (Erica Bana) and his partner Butler (Joel McHale) confront a series of grisly incidents. An infant is found dead, then ex-Marine Jimmy Tratner is arrested for violently beating his wife. Deranged woman Jane Crenna throws her baby to death at the zoo, and after a family complains about unusual sounds from the basement, the dead body of ex-Marine David Griggs is discovered. He was Jane's husband and Tratner's army buddy. 

All the incidents are accompanied by power failures and flickering lights, and Spanish priest Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) warns Sarchie they are dealing with supernatural events. Sarchie and Butler focus their investigation on Mick Santino (Sean Harris), who served with Tratner and Griggs in Iraq. Sarchie also starts to have unusual visions, and his wife Jen (Olivia Munn) and child are threatened.

Inspired by events recounted in Sarchie's book Beware The Night, Deliver Us From Evil meets expectations as it moves purposefully through a supernatural story of ominous gates, cryptic messages, demonic beings, inhuman strength, disturbing possessions, and finally an all-out exorcism. Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson adopts a grim, dark aesthetic and finds the damp and downtrodden corners of the Bronx where evil lurks.

The plot secrets are revealed in steady increments, maintaining engagement as the initially sceptical Sarchie and more jovial Butler connect the dots and identify the impossible as possible. Mendoza starts on the sidelines but gradually moves to the centre, the mounting evidence nudging Sarchie towards considering metaphysical explanations. Eric Bana and Edgar Ramirez forge a grounded duo, and the evolving partnership between Sarchie and Mendoza provides a human core amidst the abominations. In contrast the repeated references to the music of The Doors is a rather more quirky angle, the demon's preferred playlist either too obvious or left unexplained.

While Derrickson maintains tight control over the material, he is also too quick to lean on repetitive scenes slowly exploring dark spaces, light bulbs flickering and flashlights piercing the black, the next jump scare - a crazed assailant! a dead body! and yes, a cat! - just around the corner. Deliver Us From Evil delivers the requisite scares, accompanied by the typical cliches.



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Movie Review: Hanna (2011)

A chase thriller, Hanna has a mildly intriguing premise but is an otherwise lacklustre exercise in routine run-and-chase action.

Teenager Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is being brought up in the Arctic wilderness away from any social contact by her father Erik (Eric Bana). He trains her to be a ruthless warrior and an expert in survival and multiple languages. When Hanna finally grows restless, Erik allows her to activate a beacon revealing their location to the CIA. Agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) immediately picks up the signal and sets in motion a plan to capture both Erik and Hanna.

Marissa and Erik shared a history within a secretive human DNA-altering CIA program before he broke away to care for Hanna. Now he is plotting revenge, and eludes his captors as he makes his way across Europe to a rendezvous point. Hanna allows herself to fall into Marissa's clutches, before embarking on a wild run from Morocco to Europe that sucks in an American tourist family. Meanwhile, Marissa turns to the unauthorized assassination team of Isaacs (Tom Hollander) to try and clean up the mess.

Directed by Joe Wright, Hanna deserves some recognition for attempting to introduce a new spin to the thriller genre. The opening 30 minutes, featuring Erik and Hanna living an off-the-grid arctic existence with the sole purpose of perfecting Hanna's endurance, survival, navigation and hunting skills, are a provocative proposition. Wright builds curiosity around the father-daughter pair, and a sturdy foundation is laid for the story to come.

Unfortunately, the rest of Hanna fails to live up to expectations. Once Hanna and Erik re-enter the civilized world, the film descends rapidly into most routine territory. The final hour is a succession of chase, fight and shoot scenes connected by the most rudimentary and underdeveloped plot points. Character development is forgotten in favour of the next set piece. While these are undeniably well-staged, Wright leaves his actors with precious little to work with, Saoirse Ronan stuck with a single expression of mild annoyance and Cate Blanchett channeling Cruella Deville. Eric Bana all but disappears from the film.

The one distraction from the mundane surroundings is offered by Hanna finding refuge with a clueless tourist family motoring through North Africa and Europe in an old-fashioned motorhome. Dad Sebastian (Jason Flemyng), mom Rachel (Olivia Williams), daughter Sophie (Jessica Barden) and son Miles have no idea who Hanna is but she tags along, sometimes invited but mostly not. Some depth potential is offered in the burgeoning bond between Hanna and Sophie, but like almost everything in the film, that promise is trampled in the rush to the next implausible fracas with the bad guys.

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Movie Review: The Finest Hours (2016)

A rescue-at-sea drama, The Finest Hours is serviceable but never rousing.

The year is 1952, the location coastal Massachusetts and the Chatham Coast Guard Station. Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernie Miller (Chris Pine) meets and falls in love with local girl Miriam (Holliday Grainger). When he dawdles to commit, she proposes marriage, but Bernie insists on following the tradition of requesting permission to get married from his stiff Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana).

But Cluff is preoccupied with a massive incoming storm, and two oil tankers break apart in rough seas on the same night. One of them is the SS Pendleton, where the reticent engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) has to rally the surviving crew to keep half the massive ship afloat. Using a small boat, Bernie is dispatched to the Pendleton's last known location on a dangerous rescue mission, joined by Coast Guard Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), Engineman Andrew Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Navy Seaman Ervin Maske (John Magaro). Back on shore, Miriam frets about the fate of her husband-to-be.

The story of one of the Coast Guard's most famous rescues, The Finest Hours gets most of the technical details wrong, and is infused with a heavy dose of Disney's saccharine wholesomeness. The music crescendos to epic levels every five minutes, the dangers faced by Bernie and his crew are exaggerated to Greek mythology levels, the faces of Bernie and his love Miriam always glow in the incandescent light of love, and any hints of darkness, death, and guilt are pushed far to the edges, and often fully off-screen.

But after an ill-considered and really slow start that stumbles to connect Bernie with Miriam, director Craig Gillespie settles down to a respectable retelling of a harrowing rescue at sea, with Bernie's against-the-odds small-boat-in-a-big-storm journey intercut with Sybert rallying the Pendleton crew to improvise a pathway to survival. For once the CGI is extensive but also good; the images of a monstrous sea are impressive, whether threatening to swallow up Bernie's tiny motor lifeboat or mercilessly tossing half an oil tanker.

Less effective is Miriam's subplot back on shore. She runs around rather aimlessly and tangles with other locals who are suspicious about Bernie's competence due to a previous non-rescue that is only ever hinted at but never properly discussed, the script dangling a backstory and then timidly backing away from it.

Out on the seas Chris Pine and Casey Affleck are stoic without ever stretching, the enormity of events surrounding them enough to sustain the drama without the need for stellar performances.

The Finest Hours is a rescue adventure painted by numbers, produced with slick efficiency but tightly confined between dependable and predictable.

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Movie Review: Lone Survivor (2013)

A war endurance story, Lone Survivor is a harrowing recreation of a mission-gone-wrong in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The setting is June, 2005, in Afghanistan. Four Navy SEALs are deployed on a remote mountaintop near an isolated village on a reconnaissance mission to identify and track a Taliban leader. The team consists of sniper Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Lieutenant Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Communications Specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and sniper Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster). Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen (Eric Bana) tracks their progress from a forward operations base, but communications are patchy due to the difficult terrain.

The mission is compromised when three local goat herders stumble onto the SEAL's observation point. Murphy and his men decide to retreat from the area, but local anti-American militias are alerted to their presence and the four men are caught in a vicious firefight, vastly outnumbered and cut off from any support.

Directed by Peter Berg and based on the book of the same name by Luttrell, Lone Survivor stays close to the facts and pays respectful attention to the events of the ill-fated Operation Red Wings. Similar in tone to Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor looks for the acts of valour and unshakeable brotherhood emerging in the midst of a ruinous military misadventure.

Berg steers clear of any politicizing or examination of why the US troops are in Afghanistan in the first place. This is a story zoomed-in on four highly-trained warriors attempting to execute a mission, and forced to innovate their way out of trouble while under fire. The ordeal is agonizing, the casualties are high, and Berg's cameras do not flinch in the face of bullet strikes, physical and mental suffering, and death.

Berg's script relied on actual mission reports and autopsies to capture the details of individual wounds, and Lone Survivor is a testimony to the eternal horrors of war, up-close and personal. More than once the SEALs tumbled down steep rocky embankments to try and escape their pursuers, and the images of human bodies hurtling out of control and bouncing repeatedly off hard objects are painful to watch.

Once the combat starts at around the 45 minute mark, Lone Survivor unleashes and sustains unrelenting intensity, the bonding between the men rising as their casualties mount and the inevitable arrives. Berg achieves a memorable combat and heroism climax when Murphy, under intense fire, insists on reaching a rocky but exposed high point to try and establish communications and call for help.

Given the film's focus on just the four men, Lone Survivor could have invested more time in their backstories. Berg provides a few perfunctory and abstract references to wives and girlfriends, and leaves it at that. The film also unfortunately falls into the tired Hollywood trap of over-juicing the final drama, placing Luttrell in perils that he never actually faced, when his actual ordeal should have been sufficient.

But these are relatively minor quibbles. Lone Survivor is a superior and forceful war film, capturing soldiers at their best under the worst possible conditions.

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The Movies Of Eric Bana

All movies starring Eric Bana and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Troy (2004)

Munich (2005)

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Hanna (2011)

Lone Survivor (2013)

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

The Finest Hours (2016)

The Dry (2020)

Apex (2026)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Black Hawk Down (2001)

Based on real events, Black Hawk Down is a stellar war movie. The depiction of the Battle of Mogadishu is a stirring story of a mission gone wrong, and the men who had to subsequently rescue each other and limit the damage.

It's October 1993, and US forces including Army Rangers and elite Delta Force troops are stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Initially deployed on a famine relief mission, the US military is getting embroiled in a local civil war among squabbling warlords who do not hesitate to use starvation as a weapon. Powerful militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid is designated as the worst of the bad guys. Delta Force operators do capture arms dealer Osman Ali Atto (George Harris), but are no closer to shutting down Aidid's operation.

Based on sketchy intelligence, Major William Garrison (Sam Shepard) hurriedly cobbles together a mission to try and capture Aidid and his top aides while they meet at a safe house. American troops backed by helicopters leave the safety of their airport headquarters and delve into the dense Aidid stronghold of Bakaara Market within the labyrinthine confines of Mogadishu. Intended to last less than an hour, everything that can go wrong on the mission does go wrong, with thousands of militiamen taking up arms against the small American extraction team and shooting down two Black Hawk helicopters. The American forces get caught in a nightlong quagmire, incurring heavy losses while they try to rescue fallen soldiers and escape from a city filled with countless enemies.

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on the best-selling book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down is an exhilarating war movie. After a slowish start to establish the premise, the film explodes into an unrelenting two hours of non-stop intensity as the battle is covered from several angles. As far as representing the grim agony of street warfare in third world cities against overwhelming opposing forces, the film stands a class apart. Scott and cinematographer Sławomir Idziak capture the chaos, confusion and danger-around-every-corner that characterizes modern urban warfare.

Soldiers are separated from each other, seemingly straightforward tasks like getting to the crash sites and rescuing the pilots turn into cascading disasters, with the rescuers needing rescue. Every block is a battleground, every window, doorway and rooftop a source of danger. Soldiers perform impromptu surgery, while others push ahead despite wounds and exposure to comrades killed under horrific circumstances. The film rams home both the insanity of war and the courage of the men who make it their profession.

Black Hawk Down does get a few things wrong. The Somalis are all faceless hordes, the definition of a blood thirsty enemy presented with no context. Back in the early 1950s Hollywood started to humanize natives in Westerns and then Germans in World War II movies. To produce a 2001 film without a modicum of perspective on what the other side is willing to die for is quite myopic.

Also relatively poor is the lack of distinction among the American fighting men. Josh Harnett, Tom Sizemore and Eric Bana emerge as individuals due to defined character traits, but the rest of the men are effectively interchangeable, and once bulked up in equipment and helmets, they all look the same. The large cast includes Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven and William Fichtner.

But the objective of the film is to celebrate the armed forces, and to snatch a moral victory out of an astounding defeat which carried huge local tactical and overall strategic resonance. After the Mogadishu humiliation the US was seen as weak, defeatable, and quick to cut and run. But at the level of the fighting men, Black Hawk Down does reinforce the one-for-all and all-for-one ethos of the military, the heroic sacrifices, and no-man-left-behind principles. Against overwhelming odds the street battles feature countless examples of men risking their lives to help others, a band of brothers mentality that turns individuals into an army.

Loud, severe and imperfect, Black Hawk Down passionately captures the ugly realities of war as waged in hostile cities.

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Movie Review: The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

A fast-paced romp through the politics of sleeping with King Henry VIII, The Other Boleyn Girl plays fast and loose with history but is an undeniably enjoyable film.

It's the 1500s in England, and the Boleyn family are at the fringes of the royal circle. Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn (Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas) have daughters Anne and Mary (Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson), who are both attractive and looking to get married. The older Anne is more outspoken and independent, while Mary is more demure and marries William Carey (Benedict Cumberbatch). The girls' uncle is the Duke Of Norfolk (David Morrissey), and he is aware that the marriage of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) to Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent) is in trouble, since she cannot bear him a son.

The power hungry Duke spots an opportunity to gain influence by arranging for the King to take Anne as a lover. But the plan is quickly knocked off course when Henry falls under the spell of Mary instead, and takes her into his inner court as his mistress. Anne feels deeply betrayed, and a rift develops between the two sisters. Anne is hustled off to France to prevent her from interfering with the Boleyn family's growing influence. But Anne will not settle for being the "other" Boleyn girl, and soon her opportunity arrives to influence not just the King but the entire history of England.

Based on the novel by Phillippa Gregory and directed by Justin Chadwick, The Other Boleyn Girl does not pretend to be a historical record. Rather, this is a satisfying history lite story of naked ambition, sibling rivalry, and the little events that cause big ripples in the destiny of nations. That all the characters are based on real people and similar events actually did happen is just an intriguing bonus.

Proximity to the King is the crackling current feeding the cascading torrent of passion. For the Duke of Norfolk, tempting Henry with Anne is a pathway to influence. For Mary, acting as the King's lover is a duty not to be questioned. And for Anne, gaining the King's affection is a game of naked personal ambition and family one-upmanship. Only Elizabeth Boleyn, the mother unapprovingly witnessing her family's grab for power, attempts to resist the prevailing tide, but hers is a voice that will be prophetic rather than heeded. The thrust to satisfy the King's lust ends with fragments of discontent littered all over the family's destiny. And at a national level, Henry's manic drive to divorce and remarry creates an entirely new religious reality in Europe.

The Other Boleyn Girl is sharply edited to the point of abruptness. Breaking with the tradition of costume dramas requiring prolonged scenes of languid conversation, the better to linger on lavish dresses and impressive set designs, Chadwick instead aims for a snappy pace and keeps his scenes deliberately concise. The briskness ensures the film never descends into the heavy sands of weightiness for the sake of history; but is does come with some unusually snappy character decisions and some significant time compression between key events. Some seemingly critical incidents are skipped altogether and just commented on, including Henry's fall during the fox hunt and Anne's time in Paris.

Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson are a delight to watch, and they carry the emotional weight of the film. Portman has the showier, more intense role, but Johansson holds as much influence with an understated and ultimately more complex performance. Eric Bana offers a unique take on King Henry VIII, emphasizing the frenzy caused by the absolute need to father a son, at any cost. One or the other of the Boleyn girls will provide his heir to the throne, but not in any manner that the King would have predicted.

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Movie Review: Munich (2005)

A brilliantly pessimistic action drama centering on the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics, Munich is about the limits of bitter bloodlust.

At the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September group storm the Olympic Village, shoot and kill two Israeli athletes and take nine more as hostages. A botched rescue attempt by German authorities ends in tragedy: all the hostages are killed, as well as five of the attackers. Three are taken alive.

In response, Israel activates a death squad to find and eliminate Europe-based Palestinians connected with the Munich plot. Mossad agent Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), married to a very pregnant Daphna (Ayelet Zurer), is selected to lead the black ops mission, and is given the names of eleven Palestinians to kill. Avner's handler and only subsequent link to the Israeli government is Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), while his fellow squad members are the supposed explosives expert Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), the South African Steve (Daniel Craig), the self-designated "cleaner" Carl (Ciarán Hinds), and document forger Hans (Hanns Zischler).

In Paris they connect with the mysterious Louis (Mathieu Amalric), who runs a private syndicate specializing in selling information about agents who do not want to be found, but only to non-governmental buyers. Avner and his group get to work, and start finding and killing their Palestinian targets, although none of the killings are easy, and there are many messes and near misses involving civilians and faulty explosives. Palestinian reprisal killings also escalate, and Avner realizes that his mission is only creating more killers and more victims.

When the killings escalate to a full scale Israeli Defense Forces commando raid on Beirut to eliminate three key targets, Louis' "Papa" (Michael Lonsdale) gets involved, and Avner's cover as an Israeli agent is blown. Every successive mission becomes more difficult, and Avner and his men are soon both the hunters and the hunted.

Adapting the book Vengeance by George Jonas, Steven Spielberg wades into the Middle East conflict, and calls what he sees: a series of revenge and counter-revenge killings that achieve exactly nothing for either side. Every death generates more hurt, more pain, more victims, and more avengers, and moves the conflict further away from any resolution. The hunters become the hunted, the killers are also killed, and the blood-letting only begets more blood-letting, with innocent casualties strewn across history for good measure.

These truths can be difficult to accept for both the Israeli and Palestinian side, and Munich has detractors from every corner. It's easier to lash out and add to the violence rather than sit at the negotiating table and hammer out a peace, and Munich is meant to show both the senselessness of the war path, and the pain inflicted on the foot soldiers who are superficially successful in their missions.

At over 160 minutes, Munich is a relentlessly grim masterpiece about a dirty secret war played out on the sidewalks of Europe's capitals. The film aches with the tension of events and the intense pressure on men one misstep away from death. Spielberg captures the shadowy underworld of Europe in the 1970s, gripped by acts of terror and filled with Israeli and Palestinian agents intermingling among Cold War spies. Deadly games are played across the spectrum from regional to global, enemies making surprising friends with allies of their enemies for geopolitical gains, the double cross as close as the next street corner.

The deeper he goes into his mission, the more certain Avner is that the killings do not come with victory or jubilation. Rather, dread and reprisals accompany his transformation into a soulless death machine, and whether he finally physically dies at the hands of his enemies does not matter: he is dead inside, his life transformed into a living nightmare.

Munich ends with a painfully intense sex scene intercut with the raw, brutal horror of terrorism, the circle of life becoming the circle of death, waiting in vain for the courage required to break the cycle of violence. More than anyone, the soldiers of war know that it is the diplomats who have to win the peace, otherwise the abominations will just continue across the generations. And to make the point, in the final image Spielberg's camera lingers, for a long time, on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

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