The problem with movies in which women triumph over the men who brutalize them is that you have to watch the women being brutalized first. That’s the issue with Baltasar Kormákur’s Apex, in which Charlize Theron plays a confident, experienced adventurer who nonetheless finds herself terrorized in the Australian wilderness by a male nutter, played by Taron Egerton. The movie is sometimes thrilling; often it’s just sadistically unpleasant. But at least Theron mitigates some of the material’s problems, because she can mitigate pretty much any movie’s problems. Even when you want to look away from the movie’s glimpses of rusty meat hooks and bloated corpses, there’s no way to keep your eyes off Theron.
Theron’s Sasha is the kind of woman you know you don’t need to worry about. In the movie’s opening scene, she shows phenomenal muscle strength and perseverance as she scales the imposing, snow-dotted Norwegian rock face known as Troll Wall. Whose butt couldn’t she kick? But that early scene also reveals the tragedy that has scarred Sasha: Her partner both in life and all sorts of thrill-seeking adventures, Tommy (Eric Bana), doesn’t make it up that rock face, and Sasha feels partly responsible for his death. Earlier, huddled in their tiny tent, he’d revealed to her that he wanted to slow things down; he’d become tired of tagging along in her ceaseless quest for the ultimate adrenaline rush. In Sasha’s eyes, their spark somehow both sharp and muted, you can see that she fears he’s becoming tired not just of their shared adventures but of her. And all this happens before the movie’s opening credits. Theron is a supremely economical actor. She can outline a character’s significant traits in the space of a few seconds, which may be why she’s so great at playing action heroes. She doesn’t have a moment to waste.
Next thing we know, Sasha is pulling into a remote Australian gas station, ready for her next challenge, a solo kayaking trip in a sprawling national park. Yet there’s something somber and closed-off about her; it’s clear she still hasn’t gotten over Tommy’s death. A park ranger warns her against traveling solo, pointing ominously to a board cluttered with pictures of missing persons, ostensibly victims of nature’s wrath, its snakes, or at least its twisty, bewildering trails. But Sasha is unfazed. Not even a bunch of leering hunters, stopping in for last-minute gas and provisions and virtually undressing her with their eyes, can rattle her. A gentleman bystander—he makes and sells meat jerky, and he’s dropping off his latest batch—witnesses the goons’ behavior and later apologizes to her for not speaking up. Sasha waves him off—she doesn’t need any man’s protection—though later, because he seems friendly enough, she asks him for directions. He describes a special, secret, tantalizingly remote spot and tells her exactly how to get there. The warning bells don’t go off for her, even if they’re probably clanging boisterously for you.
The rest of Apex is a little The Most Dangerous Game, a little Silence of the Lambs, a little Deliverance, though it hardly reflects the best bits of any of those movies. Theron’s Sasha is the prey; her aggressor, Egerton’s Ben, is a lunatic with mommy issues. She can almost outrun him, but not quite. Yet in the end she can outthink him, and Apex hinges on our knowledge that she will prevail.
Still, do we really want to see her tied up and menaced, or yowling in pain as the jaws of a metal trap clamp around her leg? Kormakur is a versatile director: he’s made boilerplate action thrillers like Everest and Beast, though movies like the 2024 Touch prove he’s not immune to the charms of romantic melodrama. Apex is efficiently made, and Theron is such an assured performer that she doesn’t allow the audience to linger unduly on Sasha’s suffering. But Apex fails to work either as a vehicle for sick thrills or an excuse for lots of feminist butt-kicking. Ben’s twisted misogynist savagery is exhausting from the start. It’s a wonder he doesn’t die in the movie’s first half, struck down by the deafening clatter of our collective eye rolling. Instead, we have to wait for Theron to finish the job, and even in her capable hands, it takes too long.
