You know this is quality stuff when it doesn’t have a wiki page. We’re in the Great White North; one can tell by Caucasians and snow. It’s one of those towns where the main drag is four blocks long and dead ends at a mountain. It probably sprung up only because “Base Camp” got out of control.
Widower sixty-something mom is getting remarried, which reunites estranged brothers Toph (Tyler Labine), the local pot dealer, and Cooper (Chace Crawford), the city slicker. This is one of those buddy pics in which we’re supposed to realize the loser isn’t really a loser and the winner isn’t really a winner – perhaps there’s hidden depth as the film is about brothers while written/directed by Tyler’s real life brother Cameron Labine.
On the wee premise of a squatter taking up residence in the family’s, for lack of a better term, “vacation home,” Toph and Cooper travel even further north for some quality cabin time. Within hours, their small A frame and the 4-wheel drive they arrived in are both consumed by an ill-conceived fire, and the boys, trapped deep in the cold mountainous winter, suddenly find themselves in survival mode. Can they become Mountain Men overnight?
There’s a lot of snow and hiking in this film … and yet a curiously full amount of sunlight. So … if not winter, why all the snow? And if not summer, why all the light? Is this some weird part of Canada where the temperature remains see-your-breath cold even in the lighter part of the year? Or maybe this screenplay just wasn’t well thought out.
Um, yes, this is TV movie material. Crawford and Labine are not Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. The scope and stars and gimmicks are all on a smaller scale. A Walk in the Woods or Gerry is where this film wants to be. In Mountain Men, the distance doesn’t seem as long, the dire doesn’t seem as dire, the idiocy doesn’t seem quite as foolhardy. But I didn’t like A Walk in the Woods perhaps exactly because of all of the above. I didn’t
love Crawford or Labine (and Crawford, seriously, go to acting school and work on pain; you’ve got to sell that), but I did care enough about these two not to turn off completely. Do I identify with Tyler Labine more than Robert Redford? Yeah, I think that’s fair to say.
This isn’t great art and it’s not a great film, but if it’s 3 in the morning and you can’t fall asleep or you have a bad cold or something, Mountain Men won’t make you rue the time spent. Titus, on the other hand … what the Hell was I thinking?
Toph and Cooper, years removed brothers
Prefer separation, if given their druthers
Trek in the Wild
With action mild
Seek better? Sure, there are others
Not Rated, 85 Minutes
D: Cameron Labine
W: Cameron Labine
Genre: Male bonding, family bonding, carbon bonding, junk bonding, etc.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Estranged brothers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: True survivalists
