Big Game, film review: Tongue-in-cheek humour combined with well-staged stunts

(12A) Jalmari Helander, 90 mins. Starring: Samuel L Jackson, Onni Tommila, Jim Broadbent

Survival skills: Samuel L Jackson takes to the wilderness as the US President in ‘Big Game’ (Stephanie Kulbach)

You can't help but warm to the sheer preposterousness of Big Game, a film in which the US President (Samuel L Jackson) ends up stranded in the Finnish wilderness and dependent on 13-year-old local boy Oskari (Onni Tommila) for his survival.

Oskari has been left in the wilds to prove himself as a hunter but is barely strong enough to use a bow and arrow. He certainly doesn't seem a match to the terrorists out to kill the President. This is at once a rites-of-passage story and an action movie.

Its tongue-in-cheek humour and lapidary one-liners ("The forest is a harsh judge – it gives each of us what we deserve") are combined with some well-staged stunts. An added draw is Jim Broadbent, dressed like an absent-minded geography teacher but playing one of the CIA's most experienced and ruthless agents.