The Edge

The Edge has always been one of my favourites, and is indeed a good film that has unfortunately been lost in the crowd and to time. I was surprised to see it's release date from back in1997, making me feel incredibly ancient. But that's the way it's gone, and in the past few months I've had this intense urge to watch the movie again. In fact, I've probably only seen it once or twice so it was time to deliver the ultimate test: is this movie actually good, or has the past fourteen years clouded my memory?

Just like The Shadow, I was hesitant to rewatch, but it also suffers from the same problem: no proper HD release. With The Shadow, there was never a decent DVD release, and understandably there is no proper Bluray release of The Edge (yet...and probably never). In the world of Netflix though, these movies could see high definition (I believe The Shadow was) but for some reason, The Edge never received the treatment. So the first half hour or so was marred by pixelation and artifacting, no doubt a result of a combination of low quality streaming, with a low quality source: I would have been better off buying the DVD, if that's even possible now. I trudged through though, firmly in the belief that video quality doesn't make everything, and I should be able to enjoy the movie's content, regardless.

I'm happy to report that the movie is just as good as I had remembered it, perhaps even better. Throughout my life I've had a certain love affair with the the outdoors. As I grew up, I had a few friends with access to the great outdoors: we would go to their trailer (which moved from camp to camp every summer) and go swimming, boating, some light hiking and of course video games. Indeed, one of my main memories was playing Super Mario Bros 3 on a very small screen in my friend's trailer. It seems backward but such as it were; we certainly got enough outdoors time. There was a certain amount of adventuring in exploring the different camps, and occasionally hiking trails (we were young).

The Edge follows Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins (and Michael from Lost, for a time) lost in the woods, surviving and trying to find rescue. Charles (Hopkins) is loaded to the brim with cash, and has a beautiful young wife. Robert (Baldwin) is a photographer who doesn't know the first thing about the wilderness, so it's up to Charles to lead them out. Of course, there is tension: Robert and Charles' wife seem to have something going on. Charles picks up on this and is understandably suspicious. He assumes everyone is after his wife and his money, and just before their plane crashes he jokes to Robert by asking him how he is going to murder him. The idea is in Robert's head now, of course, and being the entreprenuer decides it would be an opportune time to try it out. What better environment to kill someone and leave their body than the vast open wilderness.

But Robert needs Charles to survive, and he makes this clear. Add to that tension, the fact that a giant bear is hunting them the entire time and you have a decent little outdoors film. Everything wreaks of the nineties here, and it's surreal seeing a young(er) Baldwin and Hopkins running through the woods. I found it interesting that there were two climaxes throughout the film, sort of. The first being the final confrontation with the man-eating bear (played by Bart the Bear, who ruled bear-movie roles for nearly two decades) then shortly after the duel between Robert and Charles. They are resourceful and Charles is full of outdoors knowledge, but it's good to see that not all his tricks work. Survival is no easy feat and this being a movie, is not the most realistic depiction, nor would I expect it to be. It's all about these two characters, needing one another but wary of each other at all times. Like a more complicated version of chess being played in the wild, this movie truly did entertain, and has held the test of time.