MINE: A High Concept Thriller Uninterested In Its Own High Concept

In an indistinct corner of Africa, two American soldiers are stranded on a mission to assassinate the hermit leader of a Boko Haram-styled terrorist organisation, after he is seen in clear daylight for the first time in years.

With the desolate, sand swept landscape grounding the characters, as well as the additional moral quandary of ensuring the correct suspect is dispatched of to avoid any escalating conflict, Mine initially introduces itself as a cross between Gavin Hood’s tense terrorism thriller Eye in the Sky and Gus Van Sant’s experimental desert isolation drama Gerry. Setting up this idea suggests that the ensuing film will combine raw, paranoid emotions with a tightly wound narrative that asks the audience to question their own preconceptions of a morally complex issue.

Cheesy action on a shoestring budget

Unfortunately, Mine very quickly proves to be of very little interest or intrigue in both its approach to storytelling and filmmaking. The directorial debut of Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro, who cheekily dub themselves “The Mario’s” in the opening credits, possesses a narrative ambition so far out of its limited grasp, it very quickly resorts to rehashing action movie cliches- which are made to look even more ridiculous considering the stripped down scale.

Armie Hammer stars as Mike Stevens, a generically named soldier who botches the aforementioned initial assassination attempt at the opening of the film. He is led by Tommy (Tom Cullen), his sole partner on the mission, across a desert landscape to a village where he believes they will be able to find who they are chasing and take refuge.

During the walk there, Mike becomes increasingly paranoid that the pair have straddled in to a minefield, a thought amplified by a warning sign that flies in their direction from a sandstorm. Laughing it off, Tommy continues to walk across the minefield and blows off his legs by stepping on a mine. Rushing to help his friend, Mike also steps on a mine- and it is in this stationary position we remain for the rest of the movie, as he tries to survive by not moving at all.

For a film that should generate tension from the central character’s inability to move and the indifference of the surrounding baron landscape, The Fabios increasingly go out of their way to throw in contrived obstacles, introduce additional characters and, as the film progresses toward its third act, start telling a B-story through flashbacks that can be charitably deemed “entirely irrelevant”.

It is a frustrating case of a film failing to understand the nerve shredding appeal of its central premise, attempting to distract from it as much as possible. It feels like the work of filmmakers with no faith in the film they are making, or at the very least, no faith in the audience their movie is aimed towards.

Makes Michael Bay look like an auteur in comparison

The fact the movie keeps straying away from the central premise to introduce a whole host of cheesy flashback sequences, not to mention the borderline offensive “mystical black man” caricature as an inexplicable secondary character, suggests that they clearly feel the audience will be bored by a film so reliant on one performer remaining stationary for the film’s entire duration.

It feels exactly like a Michael Bay movie on an indie film budget, in terms of both the writing and the aesthetic decisions. Take the characterisations for example; the majority of the side characters, including his partner, are all quipping sidekicks with a high ratio of jokes that don’t land.

Also, look back a couple of sentences and notice that there is also a quasi-mythical black male character, played entirely for expository and borderline culturally insensitive humour. This lazy racial characterisation is also a hallmark of Bay, especially with all the side characters introduced in his woeful Transformers sequels.

The flashback sequences reveal a prior emotional trauma, but with an overblown score replacing anything approaching relatable emotional insight. The additional problem of the flashback sequences is their sheer pointlessness- they feel included to make us root for the main character’s survival, an unnecessary addition considering the fact that nobody would be begging for a generically heroic character’s death death, even without disclosing anything approaching a personality in the screenplay.

A stripped back thriller that quickly becomes too convoluted for its own good

The movie posits itself as a psychological thriller, without ever truly getting in to the psychology of the character, overwhelming itself with narrative irrelevancies in order to not focus on what should be a one man show. On paper, Mine should bear resemblance to Ryan Reynolds thriller Buried, or J.C Chandor’s wordless survival thriller All is Lost– movies that exist entirely through the eyes of their lead characters, not depicting anything they can’t physically see and generating tension because of what is unknown to them, and us.

Although many sequences call in to question what is reality and what is a mirage, each supposedly surrealist detour feels like a narrative contrivance, an excuse to tell you about the generic “troubled family life” that made this character who he is today. In the film’s earliest stages, the film even stretches credulity to breaking point by introducing two separate characters taking carefree strolls across a dangerous minefield- which is either bad writing because its patently unrealistic, or because it too obviously introduces characters who will prove to be figments of our hero’s imagination. Either way, the film is written in the same braindead mode as Michael Bay multiplex action fodder.

You could argue it isn’t too similar to Buried or All is Lost, because we do see only the things that the main character sees, but they are seldom his surroundings as they should be perceived. The mirages become so overblown and ridiculous, eventually enveloping our protagonist in a virtual reality recap of traumatic childhood moments, they overshadow the central narrative dilemma the character faces.

You couldn’t envisage a more mishandled take on a story that should be solely focused on an overwhelming life or death situation- sloppy writing that makes what should be unnervingly tense feel utterly tedious.

Conclusion

On paper, Mine should combine a high concept with a stripped back, simplistic approach to storytelling. Instead, the end result is convoluted and utterly confused about the story it is telling, building up to one of the most infuriatingly anti-climactic finales in recent memory.

The Fabios presumably wanted to prove their skills behind the camera on this feature debut and make something more ambitious than the premise suggests. Next time, they should definitely remember that less is more.

Which are the best high concept thrillers of recent years? And which waste their premise the most?

Mine is released in the USA on April 7. All international release dates are here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdB5iPt-G3w