The Gorge
Richard Curtis meets Jules Verne in an intense, genre-twisting adventure starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
The rules of the game: Miles Teller
Image courtesy of AppleTV+.
The Gorge holds an awful lot of secrets. Even its year-round occupants have no idea where they are. When Scott Derrickson’s film opens, it is on the sleeping features of Anya Taylor-Joy. Then, when her alarm goes off, the camera pulls back to reveal that she is actually in a sleeping bag, squeezed in a narrow, rocky crevice. Maybe it’s part of a gorge? Not exactly. After she’s brushed her teeth, she pulls an opening aside and squints out into the morning light to spot a plane descending on a distant runway. Nestled behind a high-calibre rifle, she takes aim and, with one shot, ends the life of the dignitary exiting the plane. We then cut to the opening title.
Of course, the trailer gives away far too much, robbing Zach Dean’s tightly, intricately constructed screenplay of any sense of surprise. The mystery is the Gorge itself and the film, part of a network of genre pathways, works so well because it keeps its cards so close to its chest. It transpires that Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa is not the only sniper in town. Miles Teller plays Levi, a withdrawn former Marine with a suspected 194 kills under his belt, who is now under contract to nobody, although he is probably one of the top five marksmen in the world. Then, after the opening title, we cut to the sleeping features of Miles Teller, but it is a nightmare, not an alarm clock, that stirs him from his slumbers. In the middle of the night (4:22, to be precise), Levi leaves his apartment to take a night drive to the beach, where he sits until sun-up, when he composes a poem. So, we already know that Levi is troubled, but that he also has a literary bent.
In the next scene, he is driven to the Marine Corps base of Sigourney Weaver’s high-level spook, who neatly reveals to us the man’s impressive curriculum vitae. We immediately find out that he is averse to medication, has no significant other and is the ideal man for a top-secret mission, the location of which not even he is privy to. He is to act as “a maintenance man” at an isolated military post atop a seemingly impenetrable gorge somewhere, he suspects, in the northern hemisphere. He is to stay there, alone, for the next 365 days, his only purpose to stop whatever is in the gorge from getting out. Across the daunting chasm, opposite his own remote hideout, is the East Tower, guarded by another solitary figure…
In no uncertain terms, Levi is told that “contact with the other side is strictly forbidden”, but loneliness can do mischievous things to a fellow, and so evolves a flirtation of sorts, conducted via high-definition binoculars and rifle sights. At this point, the original set-up is enough to keep us engaged, until the film slips into more extravagant territory. It’s best to keep an open mind, as the film skips artfully between genres, beggaring expectations at every turn. If one is content to enjoy an adventure that encompasses a blend of Tom Clancy, Jules Verne and Richard Curtis, then the film pulls off its revelations with aplomb. It helps, too, that Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy make for such engaging company, while Derrickson’s firm control of the narrative and the first-rate production values add to the entertainment value. Fans of Taylor-Joy in the Netflix hit The Queen's Gambit should be particularly taken with the scenes of chess conducted on either side of the gorge courtesy of binoculars and an A3 writing pad.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, William Houston.
Dir Scott Derrickson, Pro David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill, Sherryl Clark, Zach Dean, Adam Kolbrenner and Greg Goodman, Ex Pro Miles Teller and Marc Evans, Screenplay Zach Dean, Ph Dan Laustsen, Pro Des Rick Heinrichs, Ed Frédéric Thoraval, Music Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Costumes Ellen Mirojnick, Dialect coach Catherine Charlton.
Apple Studios/Skydance Media/Lit Entertainment Group/Crooked Highway-AppleTV+.
127 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 14 February 2025. Cert. PG-13.
