I'm reviewing the 2018 action/thriller film, Braven, directed by Lin Oeding and stars Jason Momoa (also producer), Stephen Lang, and Garret Dillahunt. A logger and his father head to their hunting cabin, hoping for a quiet weekend for some father-son alone time. Instead, they find themselves in a kill-or-be-killed standoff for survival when they encounter a gang of ruthless drug traffickers. I caught this film's trailer by accident when I was browsing YouTube a few weeks back; it looked pretty good. This film was ok, but it has a lot of flaws; a bit of a disappointment. Starting with my pros, of course I enjoyed Stephen Lang and Jason Momoa. Both of them had great chemistry together. The cinematography was absolutely beautiful with all the snow, mountains, and the forest. The brutality was great, though their wasn't much of it. When things went south, it was pretty bloody. There's an emotional part that I'm going to leave out which was sad. That's pretty much the only things I like about this movie. Now onto my cons. The overall plot was very subpar average. It's something you'd expect from a straight-to-video film. It's something that you would accidentally find going through Red Box or maybe Netflix. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you get the picture on how these films sometimes make very standard plots and since it's straight-to-video, that's to be expected. I like the actor who plays the main villain in this film, but his overall character was very meh; a standard villain that's into drug trafficking but has back story. The first half does drag a lot. I get that they're trying to do character development with Jason Momoa and Stephen Lang, but that went on for over 40 minutes. The initial plot doesn't happen until almost an hour later in the film, which bothered me. The plot is very predictable from beginning to end and that really killed the mood for me. The ending had a very noticeable green screen issue, which had me laughing hard so there's that. This film had potential with its cast, but instead they went the cheap route with very below-average writing. It's still watchable. What were your thoughts on this film? Leave me a comment below and I'll see you in the next review.
Final Grade:
