Review: APEX

 by Rob DiCristino

Let Theron be Theron.

Here’s the thing: It’s patently ridiculous to feel sorry for Charlize Theron. She’s one of the most commercially successful actors in Hollywood. She’s an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Silver Bear winner. She’s a noted advocate for charitable causes around the world who’s headlined celebrated masterpieces like Mad Max: Fury Road and played memorable supporting roles in cult favorites like That Thing You Do!. She’s taken weird chances in offbeat comedies like Long Shot and cashed paychecks in franchise slop like The Fate of the Furious. She’s a talented performer with brains enough to take the reins as a producer under her Denver and Delilah banner. In short: Charlize Theron is doing just fine. And yet there was a time when I told myself — probably while white-knuckling it through The Old Guard 2 — that Charlize Theron deserved much better. That she was better than Æon Flux and Atomic Blonde. That she was better than Doctor Strange 2 and her new Netflix thriller, Apex. But I think I was wrong. Maybe Charlize likes these roles, and maybe that’s okay.

From Icelandic action director Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns, Everest, Beast) comes Apex, a low-fi riff on The Most Dangerous Game that pits Theron’s adventure-seeking Sasha against a feral hunter (Taron Egerton as Ben) in a one-on-one showdown deep in the Australian wilderness. Stricken with guilt over the accidental death of her boyfriend (Eric Bana as Tommy), Sasha follows his lucky compass to the Outback so that she can… Wait. Actually, it’s never made clear why she’s there. To hike and kayak, I suppose. Doesn’t matter. Ben’s just a nice guy at a gas station when they first meet, and Sasha doesn’t find anything fishy about the very specific instructions he gives her to a very secluded part of the nearby national park. Well, surprise! He’s a homicidal maniac. Now, armed with only her wits and some salted meat of questionable origin — Ben’s own recipe, it turns out — Sasha must navigate an escape through Australia’s most treacherous rivers, mountains, and canyons before a crossbow-wielding madman with mommy issues turns her ass into jerky. Literally.

Gleefully unburdened by plot, theme, or dramatic complexity, Apex is the kind of innocuous Friday night actioner my stepdad can click on when he’s decompressing on the couch after a long week at work. My mom will insist that he keeps the volume down — he’s about as reckless with the sound system as she is with her brake pads — but he could probably get just as much out of Apex on mute as he would if he could actually hear the collection of tropes and cliches that makes up Jeremy Robbins’ screenplay. It might work better, actually: Rather than going on our own hopeless hunt for character development — Sasha’s reckless thirst for adventure gets her boyfriend killed in the first act but becomes a crucial asset in the other two (?) — we’re free to enjoy Apex’s breathtaking landscape photography and death-defying stunts, both of which are — *checks Apex’s press notes* — definitely, 100% filmed in real locations and employ absolutely no indoor sets, green screen trickery, or computer-generated actors. Definitely, 100% not. Definitely.

And while I might personally prefer to see an actor as gifted as Charlize Theron exercise some more textured thespian muscle — maybe I’ll get my wish in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey, in which she plays Calypso — the fact remains that she seems perfectly comfortable making B-tier action movies for Netflix. She seems perfectly happy trading hackneyed barbs with the likes of Taron Egerton — who studiously observed James McAvoy in Split when preparing for his role in Apex — and charging her gym membership to the studio. Once I accepted that, I started to appreciate Apex the way I appreciate the days in class when my students are writing essays or taking tests, the days when simply being physically present is enough to earn my money. It is an objective fact that Charlize Theron was physically present for the production of Apex. She was filmed delivering dialogue, climbing rocks, and scowling into the middle distance. It certainly isn’t the best use of her talents, but we all deserve to disassociate at work every now and then.

For his part, Baltasar Kormákur understood his assignment and executed it. I don’t know much about his previous work, but he seems to be a real meat and potatoes director — a competent actionsmith who knows where the camera should go and why it should go there. He makes that competence look easy, and even as I’m typing this, I’m allowing for the possibility that my ignorant ass is underestimating the craft required to execute even bland, C-plus work like Apex. Making movies is hard, and Apex is made with the same earnest, anodyne spirit as its Netflix cousin, Thrash. I know I should be celebrating the Pure Cinema of that, the fact that low-budget rip-offs and programmers like Apex and Thrash are still being made (and that they’ll receive 4K releases from whichever boutique label is still chugging along in a decade or so). I just wish these box-fillers had a little more attitude. A little more charm. Something — even something bad — that would make the six weeks Charlize Theron had to roll around in the mud feel just a little bit more worthwhile.

Apex hits Netflix on Friday, April 24th.