Eric Bana returns to lead another twist-filled investigation in ‘Force of Nature: The Dry 2’
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Once again based on a bestseller by Australian novelist Jane Harper, “Force of Nature: The Dry 2” lacks the Faulknerian heft of its predecessor “The Dry” (2020), a climate-change film noir in which Australian federal agent Aaron Falk (hmmm) is almost swept away by a murder case and its connection to his own past.
In this follow-up effort, once again directed by Sydney-born Robert Connolly, who also adapted the novel, Aaron again returns to his roots in Victoria in southeast Australia, where an informer working for him and his partner Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) has gone missing. The informer Alice Russell (Anna Torv) is an executive with a company suspected of money laundering for nefarious, darkly criminal foreign interests. Alice has gone on a supposedly morale-boosting and bond-making multiple-day hike through the bushlands and mountains not far from Melbourne with four other women (the film was shot in the Dandenong Ranges, low mountain ranges covered in trees and brush). Aaron and Carmen arrive at a posh lodge near the hiking trail, where the slow-moving local rescue team has set up its headquarters. One of the four women who have been rescued, Bree (Lucy Ansell), has been taken to the hospital due to a bite from a funnel-web spider (Australia, right?). Bree went on the hike with her sister Beth (Sisi Stringer), who we will learn is an ex-con with a history of drugs. The team’s leader is bossy Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), who is married to the company’s sly, shifty, and combative founder, Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh).
Interwoven with scenes of Aaron and Carmen working with and sometimes without the rescue team are flashbacks to Aaron’s childhood, when his parents took him on a camping trip in the same area as an adolescent, a trip that still haunts the adult Aaron. In addition to this coincidence, the backwoods area was also once known as the hunting ground of a serial killer, who used his dog to hunt and lure victims. Adding to the suspense is the imminent arrival of a major storm.
Yes, let’s settle in with a big bowl of popcorn. “Force of Nature: The Dry 2” certainly has enough characters and plot to chew on for a couple of hours, and the cast is strong enough to hold our interest. Torv, who is best known as FBI agent Olivia Dunham on the Fox TV series “Fringe,” makes Alice a fairly complex figure. She has an adolescent daughter, Margot (Ingrid Torelli), who somehow survived a mass expulsion at her posh prep school for bullying fellow student Rebecca (Matilda May Pawsey), the daughter of hiker Lauren (Robin McLeavy). Yes, the webs are as tangled as they were in“The Dry” (in 2023, Harper published a third entry in a Falk trilogy titled “Exiles”).
Alice has a hard drive (yes, another one of those) with enough evidence to take down Bailey and his business. The hikers’ torches are running out of power, not unlike the hikers. They come upon a mysterious hut where they find a dog’s grave (ruh-roh). As Aaron and the rescuers search for Alice, we see flashbacks to Aaron and his father (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) combing the brush for Aaron’s missing mother (Ash Ricardo). The film has three timelines: the hikers on their hike, Aaron, Carmen, and the rescuers searching for the hikers, and the flashbacks to Aaron’s adolescent misadventure.
“The Dry 2” is watchable. But it’s too neat and arguably contrived. Before the mass arrival of the British and Irish, who were transported to the penal colony of New South Wales in 1788, the country was inhabited by its indigenous population. Perhaps a flashback to an event involving one of them in the ranges might have added a deeper layer of insight or meaning. Bana, who also served as executive producer and second unit director, is a compelling screen presence, and his Aaron Falk is certainly spooked by the past and not very happy with his lonely, aging present either. But the flashbacks are not nearly as meaningful as they were in “The Dry,” and the reveal in this case is not very revealing, except as a demonstration of the novelist’s ability to keep her fraught juggling act going.
‘Force of Nature: The Dry 2’
Rating: R for language
Cast: Eric Bana, Anna Torv
Director: Robert Connolly
Writer: Connolly, Jane Harper
Running time: 112 minutes
Where to Watch: Available to rent via video-on-demand starting May 10
Grade: B
Boston Movie News 