A Lonely Place to Die (5/10)

January 6th, 2012

It may be a bland, straight-to-DVD title, but you can’t argue with the fact that being buried alive in a box under the ground, hoping for a ransom payoff, is A Lonely Place to Die. This is the fate, though, of little Anna, kidnapped and hidden in the Scottish hilltops or, at least, it would have been were she not discovered by five adventurous rock-climbers. Their reward? Being shot at by ruthless kidnappers.

Yes the five, led by Rob (Alec Newman), are attempting the west face of somewhere or other in Scotland. Their kit is packed, and they set off on their ramble. One sidles off for a gypsy’s kiss against the nearest tree when he hears the unmistakeable muffled sound of a foreign girl screaming through the air duct of a subterranean box. Once you’ve heard that sound you never forget it. The girl is rescued. All well and good. All the climbers and the girl have to do now is get back to a village to report it.

Not so fast. There are two ways to get to the little town. The long way, mostly flat, and the short way down the cheerily-named Devil’s Drop. Rob chooses his most experienced climber Alison (Melissa George, whose presence sort of tips off the direction this movie leans towards) to descend with him, while the others take the long way home.

It is about this time we’re introduced to the kidnappers, two cut-throats played by Sean Harris and Stephen McCole, who right from the off make no bones about their devilish intentions. They want the girl back for the ransom she represents, and they’re not too fussy about how they get her. The chase is on.

With a decent £4m bankroll, perhaps it’s fair to have expected a little more from A Lonely Place to Die, but even with a spectacularly unnecessary opening and some by-the-book scenes – oh look, a Scottish town: let’s have a pagan festival! – there are still some decent adventures within. George should be commended for her action work here: she may not have done every stunt here, but it’s clear that she did some of them, and even those would have been beyond me. Whether she’s plunging into icy waters, desperately evading random pot-shots, or scaling rockfaces by her fingernails, George puts her all into it.

The supporting climbers don’t have quite as much to do, sadly, with pretty standard roles that fit the genre perfectly. Ditto the kidnappers, who are both dead eyed dicks with a rifle until someone important’s in their sights. My favourite baddie Karel Roden pops up to add his usual psychopathic menace to the proceedings; he does so here, too, even though I’m pretty sure he was one of the good guys.

Rock climbers, kidnapped girls, stone faced killers with long-range rifles, and enough peril to get your adrenaline going for a while, A Lonely Place to Die has a lot going for it initially, but eventually throws it all away on just another chase movie bound by convention. When it’s good, though, it’s blood-pumpingly good, and some of the shocks are genuinely surprising. Writers/directors Julian and Will Gilbey even had time to insert a Serbian war criminal for good measure, just to add a bit more spice to an already unsavoury mix. Ambitious in that respect at least, but in others not so much, A Lonely Place to Die is ultimately a decent showcase for Scottish Highland rockfaces and Melissa George’s doggedness, and it's a bit of a shame that it isn't much more.