Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie but grossly overrated

Did you people see the same film I saw?

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I sat down to watch "Heatstroke" purely because I had the chance and it was readily available. It wasn't a movie that I had any plans to watch, just happened to come by it by sheer random luck. And I didn't have any expectations to it, nor did I know what it was about; although I had somewhat thought it might have been a disaster movie with the title "Heatstroke".And now having seen the movie, it most definitely wasn't a disaster movie. It was an action thriller of sorts. Although, if I have to be honest, then it was fairly scarce on the thriller aspect. And actually equally so on the action part.This is the story of unruly teenager Josie (played by Maisie Williams) who travels to Africa with her father Paul (played by Stephen Dorff) and his new girlfriend Tally (played by Svetlana Metkina). Here she doesn't find the closeness to her father that she is looking for, and she has to return home to the United States. However, something happens on the way back to the airport, and Josie wakes up bloody and confused in an overturned car, with Tally at her side...I will not go further into details about the story, as that would somewhat be ruining it. Why? Well, because the storyline is rather simplistic and doesn't really have much depth or many aspects to it. It is a straight forward story, for sure, but it was just too predictable to the point where it was a mundane movie experience.The acting in the movie was good, and I must say that both Stephen Dorff and Peter Stormare really performed quite well here. It was just a shame that Peter Stormare didn't really have more time on the screen, because his character wasn't fully utilized to its full potential.All in all a watchable movie certainly, just don't get your hopes up. "Heatstroke" offers nothing profound or groundbreaking to the genre. In fact, it is actually a rather generic action thriller, to be bluntly honest. There is nothing here that hasn't already been seen in other similar movies.

Paul takes his young daughter and mistress to a wild adventure in the desert to see the surroundings and observe different animal behavior. For some reason they must separate from Tally in order to reunite again later but Paul falls as a prey to a sort of hunters who he sees them taking the fangs from a rhinoceros. Fortunately Josie escapes unharmed and she is found by Tally but now the two must run from those who hunt them.Well, it was a good way to spend an hour and a half although the story is quite sad. I still like it and having in mind that it doesn't contain violence to the animals, is bearable. The action is little is more like a cat and mouse type we see more running then action scenes, maybe this is the reason for the low rating, oh, and yes the little girl is annoying but hey, she is just a teen in our days so she didn't make a mistake. So for an sad adventure tale or for the melancholic type of audience this one is just fine.

Not sure why all the terrible reviews. Sure, this is not your typical Stephen Dorf film, but the actors all did a great job -- portrayal of the average American family dealing with a disgruntled teenager in the aftermath of a divorce and an absent father wrapped up in his work, revealed through a (rather weak) attempt of the father to "man up" and be a dad. Sad, but after the mishap with the dad (mentioned in the description), the best thing that could have happened to this teenage female was what did happen -- to be alone with, and dependent upon, the adult female character. Although there are instances in which coincidence is way out of line with plausibility, the story line, overall, is believable. I did find it interesting that we did not see more animals, as we were taken through the wilds of South Africa. The adult female, though apparently out of her realm of expertise, seems quite capable, I was surprised that she was not portrayed as doing some basic survivalist things that even I would know to do. Overall a decent film, not too many boring moments.

First of all - why the hell is Stephen Dorff holding a gun on the cover. He never comes close to a gun and dies 25 minutes in. That in itself is total false advertising. Second, God this movie is terrible. How they can make a movie like this and have it not make sense is an actual achievement. When Dorff dies, the car rolls immediately and stays there. Then Tally finds his body and his daughter Jo. Soon after, the arms dealers come back and bury the body. Where the hell did they go? At first they make it seem that there was a chase or something, and the guys have followed the trail to Dorff's car and body. Yet there is no chase. He dies immediately. Why didn't the guys bury his body and burn the car then? Instead they wander off for reasons unbeknown to us, probably so the writer could somehow get Tally to Jo. Also, Dorff dies in the spot where a great big dead Rhino is. Where the hell did that Rhino go? It isn't there when Tally gets there. In general, the film is a total snore fest. The first part of the movie is totally unnecessary. We didn't need scenes showing them talking about the trip. Why didn't the film just start in Africa? The scenes in America don't add anything to the movie. The rest of the film, when we actual start getting some sort of action, is poorly executed. How a woman that tiny managed to go toe to toe in hand to hand combat with that huge South African guy is beyond me. It is never hinted that she has any sort of training, yet we are just supposed to believe she magically managed to fight him. She jumps on his back and tries to strangle him with a rope. I doubt she'd have had the strength, especially with being so dehydrated. He then punches her twice in the face, stabs her and kicks her when she's down. Yet she somehow manages physically turn the gun round in the guys hand and shoots him. What?! The dynamic between Jo and Tally is cringe worthy and quickly turns into a lifetime movie. At the end they're best buds but you never really get any sense of them bonding and neither has any chemistry with the other. Maisie Williams - who is usually so good in Game of Thrones - is terrible in this. The scene were Jo breaks down and Tally hugs her would have probably been more believable if there was actual tears coming out of her eyes instead of Maisie just scrunching up her face. On top of that, she doesn't look sad - she just looks like there is the sun in her eyes or she has smelt something bad. It feels like she was focusing so much on doing a good American accent that she forgot to act. And then there is the direction. The scene in the camp when Jo realises the guy is part of the arms dealers is shot like a high school play. The three guys stand in a line and sort of talk at each other rather than talking like an actual human being and facing each other. And the angle of the camera is so amateurish I laughed. The chemistry between Dorff and his girlfriend is non-existent. Svetlana Metkina is a terrible actress judging her off of this performance. She says all her lines like she's reading them off of a piece of paper and doesn't seem at all interested. Her tone of voice doesn't change for the entire movie. She sounds exactly the same when she is fighting for her life as she does when she's talking about an Jo's iPad. On top of that, the writer keeps having her talking to herself which is just lazy writing. Peter Stormare can actually do a lot better than this movie and he's usually terrible too. And to top it all off - the finale is totally anti-climactic and wraps it up way too quickly considering we've all just sat through an hour and a half of the protagonists being chased. In the final scene the girls return to where Dorff's body is buried to lay some flowers when surely the authorities would have dug it up to confirm their story and to do an autopsy. And while they are laying flowers, a hyena looks on stoically in what can only be described as the best acting in the movie. Seriously, this is honestly one of the worst films I've ever seen.