The Edge

 I saw The Edge (1997) on cable about 30 years ago.  The movie is simple the point of being archetypal.  Over the years, I haven't recalled much of its plot (there isn't much, in truth, to remember), but some of the film's lines have stuck with me and, even, become axioms that I often quote.  At one point, the hero bucks up his hopeless comrade by telling him:  "What one man can do, another man can do."  At the climax, the bad guy aims a gun at the hero and tells him that "life is full of betrayals.  You're best out of it."  Someone provides the edifying advice:  "Don't ever feel sorry for a man with an airplane." There is a bit in the script about making fire from ice -- it has to do with molding snow into a lens like a magnifying glass and, then, focusing the lens on kindling on a sunny day.  (I seriously doubt if this would work, but I, certainly, hope so and have brooded about this wilderness survival trick for about half my life.)  Whenever I am lost and don't know my way, I recall the hero's admonition to his fellow castaways:  "Most people who get lost in the wilderness, die.  And you know what they die of:  shame.  Instead of thinking, they keep asking themselves 'how did I get myself into this problem?' and 'Why is this happening to me?' until, in the end, they just give up and die."  The last line in the movie, which is a lie, is the greatest and most simple:  "How did the other (castaways) die?"  "They died...saving my life."

The Edge directed by the New Zealand Maori film-maker, Lee Tamahori, represents that director at the beginning of his career, right after his breakthrough movie about the Maori people Once were Warriors (1994)  Great things were expected of Tamahori, but he was seduced by Hollywood, ended up making a series of movies that were, apparently, each successively worse and more formulaic and never, it seemed, reached his full potential.  That said, his first two movies are masterpieces of a kind and well worth seeking out.  (It may be that his last picture The Convert, shot in New Zealand in the Maori community, may be similarly powerful and a return to Tamahori's roots:  I don't know I haven't seen this movie released in 2023 and it is hard to find.

The Edge is a standard issue wilderness adventure movie.  Its premise is crude and predictable:  three men find themselves alone in the Alaskan (or Canadian) wilderness.  (The awe-inspiring visuals were shot around Banff and the Columbia ice field.) The protagonists are a smarmy fashion photographer (Bob, played by Alec Baldwin), his African-American assistant, and a billionaire, acted in a restrained manner by Anthony Hopkins.  The men have taken a plane north to a small lake in the hope of meeting an authentic trapper and Native American, a man named Jack Hawk.  Bob wants to incorporate Hawk's rugged features into his fashion shoot which involves the billionaire's trophy wife Elly, played by the actual fashion model Elle MacPherson.  On the way to a remote lake which turns out to be different from the destination they announced back at the base camp at a luxury lodge, the single engine Cessna hits a flock of birds and crashes into an icy body of water between snowcapped peaks.  The pilot drowns but the three men escape relatively uninjured.  They set off to walk back to Jack Hawk's cabin where they expect search parties will be looking for them.  But there are rushing rivers to cross and an enormous bear that decides to hunt them down as prey.  That's the situation and, in fact, the plot of the movie.

What redeems this formulaic "lost in the wilderness" film are several factors.  First, there is the awe-inspiring landscapes against which our trios travails are filmed.  The movie is beautiful and the snow and cold and rain are palpable.  Second, the film inverts our expectations -- the billionaire turns out to be courageous, resourceful, and, even, virtuous.  Hopkins plays the part superbly projecting quiet, eccentric confidence and his acting is the center of the movie.  Third, the movie involves a subplot, also very much a formula:  the smarmy fashion photographer played by the smirking Alec Baldwin is sleeping with the fashion model married to the billionaire and Baldwin, playing a deep-dyed villain, is plotting to kill the rich man.  (Baldwin is spectacularly loathsome, but he also displays a real gift for sardonic comedy and one can see the appeal that led him to comic roles on Saturday Night Live and, of course, 30 Rock where he was very funny -- he has a gift for mimicry and is excellent at imitating a fey, lisping homosexual (at one point, he accuses Hopkins' billionaire of "latent homosexuality").  Fourth, the film is written by David Mamet and the lean muscular aphorisms punctuating the script are the highlights of the movie and the aspect of the picture that I have recalled for 30 years.  Viewed in retrospect some elements of Mamet's latter-day support for Donald Trump and the author's right-wing Republicanism are visible in the movie's adoring stance with respect to the billionaire, described by his unfaithful wife "as a most excellent man." The last reason to seek out this movie is the spectacular performance by the bruin thespian, Bart the Bear.  Bart was a ten-foot tall 1500 pound brown Kodiak bear and, with Rin Tin Tin, he was one of the best animal actors to ever appear in films.  Bart, who was easy-going and gentle, provides a truly fearsome performance as the movie's vicious animal villain.  Hopkins has said that he spent hours observing Bart's acting chops on the set and learned a lot of things from the bear whom he "respected as a fellow actor."  Bart died in 2000 at 23 in Heber City, Utah.