While nobody is obligated to take Stephen King‘s voluminous bounty of film and television recommendations at face value, someone to have made such a massive impact on popular culture over the last 40+ years is often well worth listening to, with 1997’s unsung survival thriller The Edge the latest to get a shout-out.
Almost the very definition of “they don’t make ’em like they used to,” director Lee Tamahori’s decidedly and wondrously old-fashioned adventure plunges Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins into the fight of their lives when they end up stranded in the wilderness following a plane crash, with a hungry bear tracking their every move.
These days, the erstwhile antagonist would almost undoubtedly be a digital creation, but The Edge features a sterling performance from Bart the Bear, who might just be one of the famous animal actors of all-time having racked up credits including White Fang, Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground, sci-fi classic 12 Monkeys, and Legends of the Fall, while he even served as a presenter at the 1998 Academy Awards; a career a lot of human thespians would kill for.
It may have only been a modest critical and commercial success at the time of its initial release over a quarter of a century ago, but when it comes to blood-and-thunder survival thrillers, Hollywood has rarely done better. Plunging two characters with a simmering tension between them into a rugged thrill ride where their personal animosity needs to be overcome or else they both wind up dead, The Edge remains as thrillingly entertaining now as it ever did, so maybe it’s best to take King at his word.
