Producers: Johnny Martin, David Lipper, Robert A. Daly, Richard Salvatore, Rafael Primorac, Andrea Iervolino, Monika Bacardi, Danielle Maloni and Luca Matrundola Director: Johnny Martin Screenplay: James Agnew Cast: Josh Duhamel, Greg Kinnear, Peter Stormare, Maria Elisa Camargo, Ricky Russert, Michael Zapesotsky, Talia Asseraf and Michael Papajohn Distributor: Lionsgate
Grade: D+
The best thing one can say about Johnny Martin’s clumsy chase-a-thon is that it doesn’t waste the huge budget most Hollywood studios would on such empty-headed action stuff; the last thing you could say about “Off the Grid” is that it’s overly slick. Unfortunately, the grubby little movie is as hilariously simple-minded as it is cheesy.
After an idiotic prologue that foolishly reveals the outcome of a climactic confrontation that will be shown in full toward the close, the plot resituates at the sinister Belcor Company in San Francisco five days earlier, where the eponymous owner (Peter Stormare, apparently trying to channel Nicolas Cage) is fuming over the disappearance of an engineer named Guy (Josh Duhamel, whose character is defined by his big outdoorsy hat and scraggly beard), who’s invented a palm-sized cold-fusion device and run off with the prototype lest Belcor weaponize it. Cool, snide Ranish (Greg Kinnear, intolerably smug), who was instrumental in bringing him aboard, is doubtful that Marcus (Ricky Russert), whom Belcor’s assigned to track down the missing man, will be successful—a plausible insight, since Russert’s hammy performance suggests how Anton Chigurh would have come across had he been played by Crispin Glover rather than Javier Bardem.
Nonetheless the company tracks Guy down to some rural woods in Tennessee, where he’s ensconced in a shed tricked up with booby traps for unwelcome visitors. But he comes to a nearby town occasionally to pick up his regular supply of Red Bull at the local store, where he’s bonded with brainy clerk Chase (eager young Michael Zapesotsky), who hopes to go off to college in California. Guy’s also friendly with Josey (feisty Maria Elisa Camargo), the ebullient owner of the local diner and rooming house.
When Marcus shows up with his band of even more inept goons, their assault on Guy’s cabin is foiled by the strategically-placed traps, and Marcus angrily shoots any of the men who try to leave. (He’s never capable of hitting Guy, but directed toward others his marksmanship seems fine.) The initial failure prompts Belcor to send the reluctant Ranish to Tennessee, where Kinnear manages to indulge in endless complaints about mosquitos and deliver a weirdly intense excursus about the many ways in which a broomstick can be employed to inflict pain.
What follows is a protracted chase in which Guy uses his wits and wiles to evade Ranish, Marcus and a new contingent of mercenary boobs; Chase and Josey serve as Guy’s helpers from time to time, but at others become victims Guy must rescue. The pursuit is repetitious, but cinematographer David Stragmeister makes what use he can of the scruffy woodlands (the area around Clinton, Mississippi standing in for Tennessee), and editor Vincent Tabaillon tries to mitigate the tedium by intercutting between the action moments and Kinnear’s snide reactions. Frederick Wiedmann’s score works hard to energize things too, but to marginal effect.
Dully dragging out its thin chase plot to excruciating length, “Off the Grid” may well prompt an increasingly impatient viewer to join with Stormare’s Belcor when he shouts, complaining that his company’s tech has been hacked, “Why is this happening to me?” At least you have the option of switching it off.