Summary
Apex is a deeply weird movie, certainly not without obvious flaws, but it’s undeniably entertaining thanks largely to a truly out-there performance from Taron Egerton.
Whatever has motivated some of Taron Egerton’s recent career choices, I’ve got to say that I’m into it. He should probably never play a good guy again. If Apple TV’s Smoke wasn’t enough to convince you that he’s at his very best playing madcap villains, then Netflix’s Apex makes a pretty good follow-up argument. Come for Charlize Theron free-climbing mountains; stay for Egerton dancing like a madman to “Go” by The Chemical Brothers.
The funny thing about Apex is it looks like a streaming movie – it has that weird filter, for one thing – but it kind of feels like a big-budget theatrical release, something best enjoyed on a giant screen with enough surround-sound speakers to do Egerton’s weird, improvised bird calls justice. Apex is a bit hemmed in, in that respect, but it’s constructed with enough solidity to not feel cheap and ultimately benefits from a camp B-movie ridiculousness that suits casual home viewing down to the ground (from a great height).
Anyway, Sasha (Theron, The Old Guard 2) is one of those thrill-seeking climbers who can’t stop moving for long enough to realise that she’s eventually going nowhere but down. Director Baltasar Kormákur introduces her by poking her head out of a bivouac suspended from Norway’s Troll Wall, which is pretty clear as far as mission statements go, but the idea is reiterated by her climbing partner, Tommy (Eric Bana, Untamed), who is getting a bit old to keep up with her death-defying pastimes. Naturally, in true prologue fashion, Tommy ends up splattering down the mountain, leaving Sasha with a guilty conscience but a lingering need to risk her own life on dangerous solo excursions.
This is how she ends up in the Australian Outback for what is initially intended to be a kayaking trip. At this point, Apex morphs into something resembling a slasher. As soon as I saw a bunch of rowdy dudes giving Sasha jip at a gas station, I figured I knew what I was in for. But not quite. The misogynistic hunters Sasha falls afoul of are annoying, sure, but they’re relatively everyday obstacles for a woman travelling alone. Sasha’s real problem is Ben (Egerton, Tetris), a seemingly more reasonable local who turns out to be less friendly than he initially appears.
If you’ve seen any of the marketing for this movie or overheard any of the watercooler conversations that have sprung up around it, you know that Ben’s the bad guy. But you kind of have to see what Egerton is doing with the performance to understand what’s so good about it. He’s bonkers in this. The dancing scene is the most flagrantly crackers thing, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to some of the other demented things he gets up to. He’s chewing through the picturesque scenery, of that there’s no doubt, but the performance is also stuffed full of deeply creepy and off-kilter little choices that help to bring Ben to life. As capably as Theron acquits herself, this is Egerton’s movie, make no mistake.
But it’s also weird in and of itself. It doesn’t have a coherent point to make. Initially, it seems like it’s going to be about the thrill-seeker psyche from a distinctly female point of view, but then it completely abandons that idea and becomes about a cat-and-mouse chase through winding rapids and up and down mountains. Ben’s motivations and hinted-at backstory make him feel like a transplant from a different movie, and the shift in tone the second he presses play on that song is so severe as to be whiplash-inducing. It’s quite conceivable that as many people will hate the opening and love the back half as hate the back half and love the opening. Plenty will love the whole thing; plenty more won’t like any of it.
I suppose this is true of any movie, but it’s true and then some about Apex. How do you judge an experience like this? I couldn’t say. All I know is that I enjoyed it almost in spite of its wackier flourishes. The leads are genuinely great, some of the set-pieces work like gangbusters, there are a couple of fun reveals that didn’t even need to be there, and it’s a conversation starter. Given the brisk runtime, you could do a lot worse than checking it out.
