Beyond the Reach

Plot

Ruthless tycoon and trophy collector John Madec flaunts his $500,000 all-terrain vehicle in a small New Mexico town and buys off the local sheriff to bag an endangered desert bighorn sheep. The sheriff solicits the young but experienced tracker Ben to guide the malevolent Madec an hour outside town into the canyon country of Shiprock. Madec taunts Ben over his love interest, who has gone away to Colorado for a college swimming scholarship and gifted a gun that Ben taught her to shoot. When Ben asks to see the permit to hunt the endangered bighorn, Madec offers a wad of cash, which the stunned Ben begrudgingly accepts after Madec supplements his initial offer even further. Madec of shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later philosophy accidentally shoots an old prospector, and Ben insists that they must report it as an accident. Madec, on the other hand, puts another bullet from Ben's gun into the corpse, and after explaining how he can now blackmail Ben with questions of who was the actual killer, offers Ben a deal: Madec will put him through college with a finance major and give him a $300,000/year job in return for his complicity in covering up the crime.

When Ben picks up his emergency transponder, Madec destroys it and berates Ben for breaking the deal. Madec then threatens Ben with his high-powered rifle, and orders him to strip all of his clothes and shoes, and forces him to wander out in the desert to die of dehydration and exposure.

Madec plans to report that Ben went mad, shot the prospector, and wandered off into the barren horizon alone. Madec is certain Ben cannot survive, as they are in a hot desert 45 miles from the nearest town, but just to make sure, he watches Ben from a distance, using the scope on his rifle. Ben finds enough water to survive until Madec shoots the barrel containing it. Trekking on, Ben hides in the semi-subterranean lair of the shot prospector Charlie whom he'd befriended in life, but Madec blows it up with the prospector's dynamite stash, although Ben manages to escape before it explodes with the 'treasure map' of Charlie, whom Ben vows will not die without justice.

By sunset, Ben uses the map to find a wrist-brace slingshot and some marbles among a buried box of Charlie's personal effects. He goes for a hidden grotto of water that he and his girlfriend had swum in, only to find it dried up as his sun-burned body now freezes in the desert night. Madec keeps watch with his vehicle's high-powered floodlights as Ben eventually outsmarts Madec to overcome him with the slingshot like David felled Goliath.

Back in town, Madec escapes from police custody during a bathroom break to board a helicopter that he solicited using his one phonecall. Ben goes to his girlfriend and promises not to leave her side again. Armed Madec sneaks into their house as they sleep together and confronts Ben, but his girlfriend shoots Madec using the gun Ben gave her. Ben picks up the weapon, and finishes Madec off as the screen fades to black and the credits roll.

Cast

Production

On September 7, 2013, Michael Douglas and Jeremy Irvine joined the cast. Principal photography and production began on September 13, 2013, in Farmington, New Mexico.

Release

Beyond the Reach premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2014. On September 7, 2014, Roadside Attractions picked up the distribution rights to the film for $2 million. The film was released on April 17, 2015, by Roadside Attractions.

Critical reception

The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 36%, based on 64 reviews, with a rating of 4.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Beyond the Reach promises goofy genre pleasures, but fails to deliver, losing the viewer -- and a villainous turn from Michael Douglas -- in a misguided story that stumbles to the finish." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 33 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film a half a star out of four, saying "Beyond the Reach fails to achieve the Southwestern noir potency of No Country for Old Men, but there's no denying it brings to mind another Southwestern classic about malicious pursuit: the Road Runner cartoons." Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film two out of five stars, saying "Beyond the Reach is a misfire, one of those movies that never quite rises to the level of guilty pleasure. Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "There are goofy, primal pleasures to be had in the first two-thirds of the film. But Beyond the Reach exceeds even its humble grasp in the final act, collapsing in a clatter of blockheaded manhunter-movie cliches." Tirdad Derakhshani of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film two out of four stars, saying "There's not much here: The characters are paper-thin, and the action is slow, at times agonizingly so."

Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Douglas is in his element and the throwback, stylized look of the production makes Beyond the Reach an entertaining hit of escapist fun." Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a negative review, saying "Beyond the Reach is a grueling, unsatisfying thriller that fails the logic test in spectacular ways. Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News gave the film one out of five stars, saying "This film, though, lacks any spine. Director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti isn’t sure if he’s making a Hemingway-lite faceoff or a hemmed-in horror flick."