Film Reviews

Extreme Ops

• Director: Christian Duguay
• Starring: Bridgette Wilson
• Details: US / 90 mins / (12PG).

A limp action adventure, Extreme Ops follows Ian (Sewell), a director of extreme sports commercials, as he and his team of skiing enthusiasts head off to shoot an ad in the Austrian Alps. With an Olympic skier (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Pete's missus) in tow, this gang of unruly athletes get down to business. While they're staying in a remote resort, one of their number, Will (Sawa) manages to unwittingly film a Bosnian war criminal Slobovan Pavlov (Lowitsch) who is hiding out in the mountains after faking his own death. As if all this wasn't unbelievable enough, Pavlov manages to confuse our skiers for CIA operatives (as you do) and sets out to kill them. Oh dear.
If Extreme Ops was played for laughs, it may have been a bearable excursion, but that would have shown a little imaginative and intelligence - neither of which this movie seems to have much of. Mistakenly under the impression that the world needs a extreme sports movie of mistaken identity and international politics, the principals plunder their way throw their scenes and idiotic dialogue ("let the mountain tell you what to do") probably hoping against hope that something resembling their dignity will be salvaged from this sorry mess. Hope is futile.

Review by Garreth Murphy