Razorback

Rarely as fun or exciting as its premise might’ve indicated, Razorback follows Gregory Harrison’s Carl Winters as he travels deep into the Australian outback to search from his missing (and presumed dead) wife (Judy Morris’ Beth) – with Carl’s search hindered by a couple of vicious locals and, eventually, leading him to the revelation that a wild boar might’ve been involved. The degree to which Razorback slowly-but-surely fizzles out is ultimately rather devastating, given that filmmaker Russell Mulcahy kicks the proceedings off with an extremely stylish and engrossing pre-credits sequence – with the first act’s relatively promising atmosphere eventually giving way to a frustratingly meandering midsection riddled with overlong and padded-out interludes. (This portion of the spare narrative is, for example, rife with endless scenes of Carl wandering, and eventually hallucinating in, the desert in search of his vanished spouse.) The movie builds to an action-packed yet ineffective climax involving the aforementioned wild boar, with the viewer’s lack of investment in the material draining any trace of tension or excitement from this stretch – which goes a long way towards finally confirming Razorback‘s place as a fairly one-note endeavor that squanders its seemingly can’t-miss setup.

** out of ****