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“Off the Grid” (available in select theaters and on VOD beginning Friday, June 27) is an action-thriller that likely should’ve stayed in hiding.
Guy (Josh Duhamel) is a brilliant scientist who invents an innovative piece of technology that his boss Belcor (Peter Stormare) wants to weaponize. This doesn’t sit right with Guy so he leaves the company and San Francisco in favor of going off the grid in rural Tennessee.
Guy’s attempting to lay low, but still manages to build a bit of a friendship with Chase (Michael Zapesotsky), the bright teenage grocery clerk from whom he buys supplies. He also draws the eye of comely local bar owner Josey (María Elisa Camargo).
Belcor dispatches evil henchman Marcus (Ricky Russert) to apprehend Guy and force him to finish the project. Marcus’ techniques prove unsuccessful (and psychotic … he routinely clips his fellow mercenaries), so Belcor sends Guy’s mentor Ranish (Academy Award nominee and Logansport, Ind. native Greg Kinnear) to assist.
Marcus and Ranish’s presence in the community threatens Chase and Josey’s safety and it’s now up to Guy to protect his people and run off the corporate riff-raff.
“Off the Grid” is helmed by stuntman-turned-director Johnny Martin (he previously made the generically-titled Nicolas Cage and Al Pacino vehicles “Vengeance: A Love Story” and “Hangman,” respectively) and scripted by Jim Agnew (he’s also in the Nic Cage DTV biz having penned 2014’s “Rage”).
Despite not being well-written Duhamel, Camargo and Zapesotsky do what they can to elevate the material and come across as likable. Duhamel and Camargo especially have good chemistry and make for an attractive on-screen couple – I just wish their characters’ relationship was better developed. Stormare does all of his scenes behind a desk in an office and seems as if he spent a scant day or two on set. Russert’s Marcus comes across like a Temu Anton Chigurh and is often laughable. Kinnear’s Ranish (who I thought was named Radish until the closing credits rolled) often complains about how much he hates this place and doesn’t want to be here – the performance suggests the performer felt similarly.
“Off the Grid” misguidedly opens in medias res, which deescalates tension. It’s also the sort of movie where a minion steps on a landmine and they don’t have the budget to show the boom. (The actor is hilariously seen lying on the ground like he’s taking a nap and not blown apart later.) The actors playing our protagonists do what they can, but the action desperately needs to be more visceral with more viscera.