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The Guardian
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Untamed review – Eric Bana's national park thriller is as beautiful as it is totally predictable
Untamed is a blunt force thriller, set in Yosemite national park in California, starring Eric Bana as a macho special agent who prefers silence to talking and horses to motorised vehicles. It is perfectly serviceable though oddly retro – not just because it scoffs at petrol engines, but because it feels as if it could have been made in the 1990s. Even a crucial smartphone plotline doesn't come into it until very close to the end, and although park rangers have become a political hot potato in the US, national politics emphatically do not exist here. That makes Untamed an undemanding watch, but don't expect much depth. It's as easy on the eye as it is straightforward. Bana is Kyle Turner, technically not a park ranger, even though he's dressed like one, but an ISB Special Agent, which gives him extra-special cop powers. Devotees of detective dramas will be shocked to learn that Turner is brusque, rude and has a taste for bourbon that doesn't have any impact on his professional capacity whatsoever. He is haunted by a family tragedy. His personal relationships are poor. He is, of course, excellent at what he does. This makes a fairytale of both detective work and the great outdoors, which I can't say I mind too much. Turner is so at one with Yosemite that he can find strands of hair or individual beads in the vast swathes of wilderness, all 300,000 hectares of it of it. I can barely find my keys in the hallway, never mind a crucial clue partly buried in a vast national park, but that is why I don't ride to work on a horse. It begins with a pair of climbers on El Capitan summit, whose steady ascent is interrupted by the falling body of a young woman, who gets tangled up in their ropes. Was she chased by an animal, or is it more sinister than that? Naturally Turner goes above and beyond, scoffing at warnings of lightning to examine the dangling body. He takes note of the foliage in her hand and where it grows and notes the lack of animal tracks on the summit. He pays attention to the details, like Bear Grylls with a badge. He says things like, 'This is not LA. Things happen different out here,' and, 'You can't spell wilderness without wild.' That gives a decent idea of what you're in for. It is unapologetically meat and two veg, sincere and far-fetched. Initially, it looks to be a case-of-the-week setup, not dissimilar to Elsbeth or Poker Face, but reverse-engineered to have the humour sucked out of it. The body of the young woman turns out be a gateway into a wider conspiracy, a criminal underbelly lurking beneath the tourist-playground parts of the national park. There is a sense that it has ambitions to be True Detective-like, or at least, early True Detective, and there is a touch of rural noir to it too. Turner is haunted by his past, and trapped in the wilderness by his own demons. His young sidekick, Vasquez (a very good Lily Santiago), formerly an inner-city LA cop running from her own issues, thinks he has just moved into his cabin, because it is full of boxes. He has been there for years. The supporting cast is strong. Sam Neill is Turner's boss, friend and ally Captain Souter, trying to defend Turner from the PR-led bureaucracy of the park's superintendent, whose main goal is to keep tourist numbers up, which means keeping any sense of peril out of the headlines. Rosemarie DeWitt is Turner's ex-wife, who still receives phone calls from him in the middle of the night. Though Untamed is largely confined to trails and cabins, it occasionally busts the budget on a helicopter or an explosion. Still, as serviceable as it is, it leaves the impression of having once had the bones of a more elegant thriller, softened to become a more standard, more palatable prospect. It's twisty, but it doesn't take much to guess what those twists are, and where they will lead. Turner is the flawed hero upon whom everyone else must depend. The female characters are mostly troublesome, and there to be saved; if you find long, lingering shots of women's bodies on mortuary slabs gratuitous, this is not the show for you. This is US television in 2025, then: manly, gruff and outdoorsy. It opens with a sweeping shot of forests and mountains, before the American flag moves into the centre of the frame. There are bear attacks, gunfights and near-biblical levels of vengeance. It's not the smartest of thrillers, but those mountains sure are lovely to look at. Untamed is on Netflix now
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eric Bana Stars in New Netflix Mystery Thriller 'Untamed': Everything to Know
Eric Bana Stars in New Netflix Mystery Thriller 'Untamed': Everything to Know originally appeared on Parade. If you're looking for a mystery thriller to binge, but don't want to invest the time to watch several seasons or a dozen episodes or more, check out Untamed. A new mystery thriller coming to Netflix, Untamed comes writer of The Revenant and stars Eric Bana as a National Parks ranger who uncovers a mystery behind a dead body discovered in the park. Here's everything we know so far about Untamed. 🎬 🎬 What is Untamed about? This mystery-thriller follows Kyle Turner (played by Bana), a special agent for the National Parks Service who works to enforce human law in nature's vast wilderness. The investigation of a brutal death sends Inman on a collision course with the dark secrets within the park, and in his own past. How many episodes are there in Untamed? There are six episodes in Season 1 of Untamed. Will there be a second season of Untamed? No word yet if Netflix has picked up a second season of Untamed. But check back here for updates! Meet the cast of Untamed Eric Bana (Kyle Turner) Kyle Turner is a special agent for the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB) who works to enforce human law in nature's vast territories. Bana is best known for his work on Black Hawk Down, Troy, and Munich. He also played the Hulk in a few Marvel movies in the early 2000s. His other credits include Deliver Us From Evil, Memoirs of a Snail, and The Time Traveler's Wife. Lily Santiago (Naya Vasquez) An ambitious young, former Los Angeles cop, Vasquez is the newest addition to Yosemite's ranger squad. She came to the park to find a new life with her 4-year-old son, Gael. Despite being a little green when it comes to a landscape like Yosemite, her strong will, astute investigative skills, and big-city homicide techniques become useful tools in a murder that is distinctly human. Santiago's credits include La Brea, Vineyards, and Lackawanna Blues. Rosemarie DeWitt (Jill Bodwin) Jill is Turner's ex-wife, a former teacher and park counselor, who remarried a few years after their divorce. Despite the fracturing of their marriage, Jill and Turner maintain a strong bond, held together by events from their past. DeWitt is known for her roles on Mad Men, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Last Tycoon. Her recent credits include And Just Like That, The Boys, and the upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Sam Neill (Paul Souter) Souter has been the chief park ranger in Yosemite for half his life. He's a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, and friend to Turner. He's comfortable in all facets of his job, whether it's dealing with crime inside the park or with the bureaucracy around it. Neill has an extensive acting resume which includes films like Jurassic Park, The Horse Whisperer, and Bicentennial Man and television series The Twelve, Peaky Blinders, and Alcatraz. Born in Ireland, but raised in New Zealand, Neill also produces his own wine! Wilson Bethel (Shane Maguire) Shane Maguire is a former army ranger, who now uses his skills as the park's Wildlife Management Officer. Maguire's a loner, preferring to live by himself in the wilderness where it's easier to follow his own rules. Bethel is probably best known for his work on Hart of Dixie and All Rise. His other credits include Daredevil, How to Get Away with Murder, and Blood & Oil. William Smillie (Bruce Milch) William Smillie as Bruce Milch. A veteran park ranger with a dislike for most people, and a chip on his shoulder. He's worked in Yosemite National Park for more years than he'd like and he's skilled and capable when he wants to - but holds a lingering resentment towards Turner as his superior. Nicola Correia-Damude (Esther Avalos) Correia-Damude can currently be seen on Resident Alien. Her previous credits include The Boys, Burden of Truth, and Coroner. Related: Zak Santiago (Chuck Edmond) Across a dozen movies and a single episodic season, Santiago played Ramon, the weatherman, dance instructor, DJ, minister, and restaurateur in the Signed, Sealed, Delivered series on Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Mystery. His other credits include Peacemaker, Billy the Kid, and Virgin River. When does Untamed premiere? Untamed premieres on Thursday, July 17 on Netflix. Where can I watch Untamed? Untamed will stream exclusively on Netflix. Does Parade have a sneak peek of Untamed? We can't hold back this Parade exclusive sneak peek of Untamed. Check it out below. Is there a trailer for Untamed? Check out the official trailer for Untamed below. Check out images from Untamed Take a look at some select images from Untamed. Untamed NetflixEric Bana Stars in New Netflix Mystery Thriller 'Untamed': Everything to Know first appeared on Parade on Jul 15, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 15, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
CNET
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
This '90s Movie Is a Sci-Fi Techno-Noir Gem, and It's Streaming Free on Tubi
Techno-noir may not have ever been a major genre, but it delivers twists and turns in a futuristic city where things are darker than they seem. Films like Johnny Mnemonic, Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys popularized the genre, but they're far from the only options. One of my overlooked favorites of the genre is Dark City, a mind-bending techno-noir thriller that explores the idea of identity against a city swathed in darkness. Released in 1998, the underrated gem preceded The Matrix by a year, and it's streaming for free on Tubi right now Watch on Tubi I've been a fan of techno-noir vibes since my first time watching Blade Runner, and the '90s delivered a spate of excellent options that let me feast my eyes on beautiful sets, amazing stories and worlds that felt real and gritty in the best of ways. Dark City delivers a futuristic city swathed in shadows, with vibes from the 1950s like automats, or the costume design, and it's a style I can't get enough of. A man wakes up in a bathtub with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Almost immediately, things go off the rails. There's a dead woman in the next room, a cryptic phone call telling our unknown protagonist to get out of there, and a mystery that begins to unfold in the dark streets of the city. John Murdoch figures out who he is slowly through a series of clues, like his name in a ledger at the motel and his briefcase. As he tries to figure out what happened, he's beset on two sides. Police Inspector Frank Bumstead is trying to unravel a case of dead prostitutes that's leading him toward John. And then there are the mysterious "strangers." Tall, pale men who seemingly have the ability to change reality via "tuning." John is cornered by these strangers, but in a moment of desperation manages to alter reality and escape their clutches. Soon after, the clock strikes midnight, and John watches as every person in the city falls asleep, and the strangers use their mysterious abilities to change the architecture of the city itself. As John tries to recover his memories, he remembers he is from a small town outside the city called Shell Beach. However, any attempts to reach it end in failure. At this point, John is apprehended by the inspector, who believes him when he explains that something strange is going on in the city and uses his ability to tune to prove it. The atmosphere, set design, and overall cinematography in Dark City make every frame worth noticing. The 100-minute length is infused with mystery, drama and more questions than answers. The strangers stalk John and the inspector, a local doctor who has information about the strangers and where they came from, and the city continues to change and trap everyone within its alleys. I won't spoil the third act for you when you find out what the strangers are really after, and the methods they employ to find answers. When John begins to unravel the mystery he woke up inside of, things go from weird to truly out there. The murders, the amnesia and the city are all linked by the strangers, and once you find out what happened, there is no going back. Dark City reached cult classic status with good reason. While it might not have been a box office hit, it's still an amazing watch 27 years later. It's one of those sci-fi movies that gets me every time, and the cast delivers a top-notch performance. Sream it for free on Tubi, and discover the mystery for yourself.
Globe and Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Dark and stormy Japanese thriller Cloud is an excellent exploration of a market driven by greed
Cloud Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa Starring Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa and Daiken Okudaira Classification N/A; 124 minutes Opens in select theatres, including the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, July 18 Critic's Pick Buy low, sell high might be the mantra of Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a Tokyo factory worker whose off hours are spent in the grey-market world of online resale, and whose struggles are the focus of the excellent new thriller Cloud. But the economic maxim might also apply to Cloud's own writer-director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. If you bought stock in the filmmaker back during his early, perhaps more disreputable days working in Japan's pink-film and V-Cinema genres (essentially, direct-to-video erotic thrillers and yakuza flicks), then you'd be a rich cinephile today, given that Kurosawa is now widely regarded as his country's greatest, and slipperiest, working auteur. After spending the past few years experimenting with period drama (2020's Wife of a Spy) and French-language cinema (last year's remake of Serpent's Path), Kurosawa inches back toward the knotted-stomach dread of his horror classics Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) with Cloud, albeit accented this time with a healthily morbid sense of humour. And, perhaps more surprising, a serious affinity for action movie shoot-outs. The title 'Cloud' most likely refers to the digital storage infrastructure that Yoshii relies upon for his moonlighting gig, a sly bit of retail rigging that involves exploiting small business owners by buying up their wares (sometimes legitimate, sometimes counterfeit) in bulk, then reselling them on an eBay-like website for a significant markup. But the film's title might as well refer to the increasingly ominous environment which surrounds Yoshii. Once he quits his 9-to-5 job and moves his expanding resale operation out of Tokyo and into the countryside – his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) follows dutifully – the shades of Yoshii's life begin to darken significantly. At first, it is difficult to pinpoint what changes and when. Is the turning point when Yoshii hires a suspiciously enthusiastic assistant named Sano (Daiken Okudaira)? Or perhaps when Yoshii has an unfriendly run-in with a local police officer after a seemingly random act of vandalism on his rural property? Kurosawa dials the dread up slowly and steadily, until Yoshii finds himself the target of the world's most disgruntled customers. If Kurosawa is asking his audience to empathize with Yoshii, he's got a funny way of doing it. Motivated only by the amount of yen in his bank account, the character is a difficult one to root for. But then again, his aggrieved customers are driven by their own sordid, selfish desires – the thugs have spent unknown hours successfully 'doxing' Yoshii's real identity, but wear masks to clumsily protect their own. By the film's haunting finale – a gut-punch moment of reckoning that follows nearly half an hour of entertainingly amateurish gunplay – Kurosawa's sentiments on the current state of e-commerce are clear. Whether emptor or venditor, capitalism is full of caveats.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jensen Ackles Compares Countdown Action Scenes, Says Truck Surfing Is a Whole ‘Different Ballgame' (WATCH)
It's not easy being LAPD Detective Mark Meachum. In last week's July 11 episode of Prime Video's Countdown, undercover Hurricane Task Force members sneaked into a ritzy party at the Belarusian consulate, so as to hack its database and see what all Volchek's homeland knows about his decidedly dirty dealings. More from TVLine Exclusive Countdown Sneak Peek: Amber Offers Mark Comfort - But Does She Know His Secret? Save the Dates: Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke in The Girlfriend, Love Island Reunion and More Daniel Dae Kim Is One Dangerous 'Dead' Dad in Trailer for Amazon Spy Thriller Butterfly In the course of that surreptitious mission, Meachum (played by Jensen Ackles) stumbled into a heated hand-to-hand fight inside the consulate's security station, where all sorts of limbs were thrown, much furniture broken. In this Wednesday's Episode 6 of the thriller series, Meachum found himself 'surfing' atop a trailer traveling at high speed, before leaping onto the pickup truck pulling it. Which scenario most thrilled Ackles himself, who of course has had his share of action-packed fun on series such as Supernatural and The Boys? 'Oh man, I had a lot of fun with both,' Ackles shares in the TVLine video above. Though when all is said and done, straddling the fast-moving trailer was 'more exhilarating,' he says. As we noted above, 'I've done the hand-to-hand fight scene quite a bit' in other roles, Ackles reminds, and while those are fun, 'they're also tricky,' in that punches and kicks need to land in such a way that 'no one catches an elbow' for real. Also, 'Those are really sweaty days!' Ackles reports with a laugh. 'You do three takes and you get drenched.' Meanwhile, keeping one's balance while standing atop a moving trailer, and at times purposely falling, is 'a totally different kind of ballgame,' Ackles makes clear. 'All you've got to do is just hang on,' he says — until the scene demands that you get knocked to your knees and nearly slide off the side, all whilst tethered to the stunt vehicle by a thin cable. 'It's like hanging over the side of a cliff and having a buddy hang onto you,' Ackles explains, visibly dazzling even Countdown co-star Eric Dane seated next to him in the Zoom. 'It was a little nerve-wracking! But it was a lot of fun.' Want scoop on , or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to InsideLine@ and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line! Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
