The Gorge

"The gorge is the door to Hell, and we're standing guard at the gate."

Last week, we talked about some of our favorite TV couples. I now have a new movie couple to add to my list.

Released on Valentine’s Day on Apple TV+, The Gorge follows two elite snipers who are stationed on opposite sides of a massive gorge at an undisclosed location. Their orders are not to keep people out, but to keep whatever is in the gorge in. They are also supposed to have zero contact with each other. Instead, they fall in love.

There are a couple of different genres at play here: action, science fiction, a touch of horror, but the most successful might just be romance. There’s a Mr. and Mrs. Smith quality here in which all of the action really serves to support the romantic relationship at the heart of the movie.

Outside of a handful of establishing scenes, Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are our only characters, and they don’t even really get to “share” the screen together until midway through the movie since they’re on opposite ends of the titular gorge.

I cannot give enough praise to the chemistry between Levi and Drasa. It was simply electric. So much of it was just in the physical acting, too. They obviously couldn’t have any kind of traditional conversation, but the way that they would smile and kind of giggle to themselves as they wrote their Taylor Swift style notes and looked through the binoculars was just so endearing.

It was just so warm. I fully believed that Levi was absolutely smitten with Drasa, and I fully believed that Drasa was completely relishing in a rebellious flirtation that became something more for her.

It was so successful and fun that it was almost a shame when the movie insisted on transitioning into a more traditional action movie. Almost, because I did still really enjoy the second half. It just became something a little less special.

The action itself is very good. There’s a section with a Jeep that, if you manage to suspend your disbelief, is particularly tense. I’ve seen a few behind the scenes photos, and there was an actual Jeep that they were maneuvering around, even if everything else around it was CGI. It made these sections feel more solid and real, which was definitely needed to combat the video game-esque weightlessness of it all.

There is definitely a lot of CGI, and most of it was fine. There were some really interesting and creative designs that weren’t given nearly enough attention, and I do wish that the camera had lingered just a little bit longer so that I could get a better look.

The cinematography in general was very cool, though. There were some moments where the color grading was incredibly aggressive and there was no explanation for the shifts, but outside of those moments I was quite pleased by it all.

I’ll specifically call out the dance scene that happens about midway through. Everything from the lighting to the music to the movement of both the actors and the camera just made it into a very magical moment. A fittingly magical moment, given everything that it represented.

Was the plot predictable? Yes. Very much so. As soon as I got a good look at the Hollow Men (something that happens surprisingly early in the movie), I pretty accurately guessed what was going on and how it would end. Does the plot make sense? Only if you don’t think too hard about the details, like why there would only be two people assigned to guarding this location or anything at all about the logistics of the gorge. Were Levi and Drasa very thin and shallow characters? Sure, especially Drasa. Did I care? No, not really. Not when I was so invested that I managed to put my phone aside for the entire movie without any impulse or desire to look at it.

Random Thoughts

I had clocked the chess scene as a reference to Queen’s Gambit, but I only realized later that drums were a reference to Teller’s character in Whiplash.

Drasa’s Lithuanian accent was shaky. I was not a fan of it, although I did appreciate that it was Lithuanian as opposed to generic Eastern European.

Sigourney Weaver was essentially a glorified cameo, but it is always nice to see her on my screen.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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