Well this one looks like it might be a bit of fun. The first trailer for Jalmari Helander’s Big Game has been revealed, providing us with all the action and flair of a conventional Hollywood blockbuster by way of Finland. The film stars Samuel L. Jackson (The Avengers: Age of Ultron), Jim Broadbent (Cloud Atlas), Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), and Onni Tommila (Rare Exports) in the story of a boy who comes to the rescue of the President of the United States after terrorists shoot down Air Force One and leave him lost in a strange forest.
While the last few years have given us enough rescue-the-President centered action affairs – with White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen probably deterring audiences from wanting to see the same type of film again – Big Game doesn’t share all of the usual conventions one might expect from a movie of its kind. For one, it seems more family-friendly, with the action seeming to be more based on stunt work and spectacle as opposed to gore and violence. It also presents us with an unusually young protagonist in Onni Tommila, who stars as the little boy tasked with saving the President.
It’s also a foreign film, despite its big studio look and A-list acting lineup. And as the past few action romps from South Korea have proven – 2006’s The Host, 2012’s The Tower – it can be very interesting and rewarding to see how other countries handle the traditional blockbuster.
Jalmari Helander, who wrote and directed Big Game, has one prior feature to his credit, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, which also starred Tommila. The film is set for release in Finland on March 25th and in the UK on May 8th. There is currently no release date for the U.S., though that seems likely to change soon.
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