When watching the trailer for Big Game, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had accidentally and unknowingly wandered over onto the Funny Or Die website. Surely, this can’t be a real movie trailer, can it? I mean, just listen to that dialogue! But, this is a real movie trailer. It’s a very real movie trailer featuring Samuel L. Jackson – doing his best Samuel L. Jackson parody – as the President of the United States, trapped in what can only be described as a chest freezer, in the woods.
Cast your eye over the official synopsis:
“Oskari, a timid 13 year old, anxiously awaits his fate. Tradition dictates that, like his forefathers before him, the boy’s time has come to spend one day and one night alone in the wilderness. Armed with a bow and arrow, he must return with a prize to prove himself to be a man. Terrified and alone, he wanders through a vast and unforgiving forest when suddenly he hears a deafening rumbling sound. Racing to investigate, Oskari discovers an escape pod. Not just any escape pod – this pod belongs to Air Force One and the batter and bruised man lying before him is the President Of The United States! In the skies above, terrorists are hurtling their way to the crash site, hell-bent on kidnapping the President. Now the fate of the most powerful man in the world lies in the hands of a 13 year old boy. Plunged into a deadly game of cat and mouse with only hours to spare, Oskari and the President must team up to survive the most extraordinary night of their lives.”
So, it’s like The Hunger Games meets Air Force One meets The Contract, with perhaps gentle dusting of Red Dawn? That certainly is a bold choice.
The film comes from Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander, who co-wrote the script with Petri Jokiranta. Alongside Jackson, it stars Ray Stevenson (Divergent), Ted Levine (Shutter Island), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) as the Director of the CIA, Jim Broadbent (Filth) and Victor Garber (Argo). The character of Oskari is played by Onni Tommila – a regular collaborator of Helander, having previously appeared in his Rare Exports film franchise.
The thing about this trailer is that it gives the impression of being misleading. If you listen to the initial dialogue, it leaves you with the sense that the sequence in this preview has been heavily edited specifically to present the premise as succinctly as possible. Unfortunately, the result is that it seems as though we’re watching a comedy skit. Then, the freezer takes off down the ravine with the two inside and, frankly, who can tell if it’s intentionally a comedy or not?
One thing is for sure, though. If Big Game is in any way an accurate depiction of the escape pod for Air Force One, that plane needs an upgrade. Catch it on release on February 5th, 2014.
