Theme: Survival

Journey 2 The Mysterious Island (2012) – Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson and Michael Cain

This movie is full of trashy drama and juvenile remarks — it’s all a bit silly, but it has some decent action and curious story features too. I rate it Watchable — that’s a few levels below average, and it couldn’t be much worse, but it’s Watchable nevertheless, if you’re bored and haven’t seen it recently enough to remember how it goes — mainly thanks to its mix of strong and mediocore cast members. If you have seen it before and vaguely remember certain features — and maybe even if you haven’t or can’t — you may still find certain patches are highly skippable for the sake of your own sanity because not every fan of smooth action hero movies wants to sit through scenes of childish screaming, panicking and running past fictional creatures etc, or standing on a cliff and arguing about how to get down it, or even sailing a fantasy submarine vessel without much else going on, for prolonged durations. Indeed, certain patches are barely watchable, and highly skippable, but certain other patches are mildly amusing so it balances out as Watchable.

Cast Members

Josh Hutcherson stars as the rebellious teenager come young man. He’s acting straight here, acting interested in the girl, but he can’t hide his actual bentness to save his life.

Dwayne Johnson plays his stepfather who joins him on his journey as a rare chance to bond with him, and an aged Kristin Davis (from the obscenely named series in the city) plays his mother although we only see her briefly at the start and the end, when everyone’s home. Michael Caine plays the 2-years-missing grandfather who found the island before his grandson — he has the odd bit of banter with Dwayne Johnson, which is mildly amusing.

Then Luis Guzmán plays the pilot for hire, and Vanessa Hudgens plays his daughter — they both come along for the ride when their helicopter crashes in the storm around the island.

That’s pretty much the whole cast there, except the odd cop and homeowner who shows their face in the opening police chase scene.

Ice Road: Vengeance (2025) – Liam Neeson and Fan Bingbing

This movie sees classic Neeson in his element, albeit tamed down a bit due to his old age. The story is mildly intriguing. There’s some action, and a simple concept but just enough script to keep things mildly interesting.

Overall I rate this movie Below Average, but you may rate it higher if you’re especially in the mood for this genre and haven’t seen this one before. Especially if you’re a fan of the theme: travel, mountains, Everest, survival, improv, kidnap, manhunting, escape & evasion, bus driving, etc.

Identity Survival Tech

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) – Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart

The first 15 minutes of this movie comprise boring, irritating drama — highly skippable, even though it features an aged Danny DeVito (in his mid 70s).

After that, it gets really weird. If you thought a bunch of grown men & women acting like teenage goofballs in new bodies wasn’t weird enough, this time they’re acting like irritating elderly cripples — always complaining & ignoring etc. That’s quite a turn off in the first half hour, and there’s still a good 90 minutes to go! At this rate, this movie will be lucky to score Below Average which is a darn shame seeing how it stars Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart.

It’s sad to say, considering its star cast members in Dwayne and Kevin, but this movie is genuinely hard to watch at times. Especially when they start waffling with the new co-main cast member after 50 minutes in — that’s Awk Wafina, the same docile-come-hyper dumpy-butch Chinese chick in all the action movies lately — and then things stay boring for pretty much the entire movie thereafter. The Rock doesn’t get nearly enough screen time, and when he does, it’s so lifeless & bad, it kind of seems like it’s been Deep Faked, like he was ever really there and it’s all made with AI. As such, this movie warrants a Barely Watchable rating, which is several levels worse than the 2017 movie which was bad enough at Bang Average.

Post Apocalyptic Survival

Waterworld (1995) – Kevin Costner

Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner

Waterworld is a post-apocalyptic Max Mad style movie, except everyone lives on boats & rigging above water, because the whole world is flooded.

Kevin Costner stars in this epic legendary movie and does a very good job of it.

The script is fluid – the action stays busy – the plot stays interesting – the acting & cinematography are on point.

Being a high budget movie with elaborate props, it cost $172 million to make, when only $100 million was initially budgeted. It cost a lot more and took a lot longer to make than originally expected, due to under-estimating the difficulty of filming on water (it was practically all filmed in Kawaihae Harbor, in Hawaii). Unexpected difficulties included the need to take more safety precautions (accidents happened), and the need to postpone filming on bad weather days. Many people were sacked following this apparent disaster, although with high income from the foreign box office the movie did make a small profit in the end, and more importantly to some people, we ended up with an epic movie to enjoy for decades thereafter.

I rate this movie as Pretty Good alongside Hackers which also came out in the summer of 1995 but cost barely a tenth of what Waterworld cost to produce. Still, as much as it was hailed a disaster for massively over-running its budget, Waterworld still eventually turned a profit while Hackers was commercially a flop. Anyway, I rate them both a tad better than Christopher Lambert’s cool movie The Hunted (1995); also a tad better than Steven Seagal’s best movies like Under Siege (1992) and The Glimmer Man (1996); but a tad inferior to The Quest (1996) for my taste – co starring Roger Moore, that was one of Van Damme’s best movies after Bloodsport – and I may be a bit biased as a martial artist favouring the martial arts movie (if I were a sailor maybe I’d put Waterworld right up there with the best movies ever made).

Survival

Crocodile Dundee (1986) – Paul Hogan

ACTION BUSYNESS	⭐⭐⭐⭐
MOOD SETTING	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
SCRIPT COHESION	⭐⭐⭐⭐
PLOT DENSITY	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is an oldie but goldie, based around a character who has outstanding reflexes and fighting ability not just with his fists and knives but also with throwing blunt objects and in utilising his environment smartly. Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee is an ingeniously skilled survivalist who is in his element in the Australian ‘bush’ but has many a trick up his sleeve on his strange trip to New York too.

High budget; plenty of entertaining scenes that keep impressing the viewer; decent supporting cast; and above all, an outstanding concept and lead performance.

Sequels

The immediate sequel, released in 1988, was just as good as the original.

But the third instalment, which arrived much later, in 2001, was not on the same level – not even close.

And then there’s a fourth movie in the saga, released as recently as 2020, called The Very Excellent Mr Dundee, which is a self-parodic comedy-drama and a poor excuse for intellectual humour, even though it co-stars the comedy legend that is John Cleese. It’s a million miles from the original two movies which were a totally different genre but still had far better humour than this recent tripe.

Cast Members

See also

Sequels