aka Hunters
USA. 2021.
Crew
Directors/Story/Producers – Lexie + Nick [Lexie Trivundza & Nick Trivundza], Screenplay – Nick Trivundza, Photography – Santiago Bahti, Visual Effects Supervisor – Josh Jones, Makeup & Effects – Monique Parades, Production Design – Izzy Johnson. Production Company – Adventure Company.
Cast
Benedict Mazurek (Jonathan Danger), Angela Smeraldi (Jade Calloway), Paul Haapaniemi (Jungle Jim Calloway), Alexandra Keller (Ella Fritz), Alexander Harris (Delano Davis), Matt Boone (Hans Sebastian)
Plot
It is 1985. A man who gives his name as Jonathan Danger has parachuted down onto an island twenty miles off the coast of Africa, although the landing has caused him to pierce his lung on a tree branch. He is immediately pursued by East German agents led by Ella Fritz. He makes an escape and seeks refuge with fellow American Jade Calloway, along with her brother who calls himself Jungle Jim and is certain that Jonathan is a Communist spy. Jonathan tells them that he is searching for the same temple on the island that they are and reveals he has a map leading the way tattooed on his chest. He knows that the temple contains a time machine and is seeking to use it to travel back to 1982 and save his daughter from dying in a fire. Jade reveals that the time machine comes from the future and was studied by their scientist father before he was court martialled by the government. The East Germans meanwhile are seeking to obtain the machine to prevent the fall of the Soviet Union.
Danger! Danger! was the second film for the husband and wife team who bill themselves as Lexie + Nick (real names Nick Trivundza and Lexie Findale Trivundza). The two had made some half-dozen short films throughout the 2010s and one feature-length film prior to this with the Western The West and the Ruthless (2017).
Danger! Danger! has been construed by Lexie + Nick as a homage to the 1980s Adventure Film as per Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the Indiana Jones films. The action has been set back in 1985, the height of the 80s revival of the adventure film that was inspired by the success of Raiders. There are not exactly Nazi villains but we do get East German agents of the Soviet Union who are trying to turn back time (and it is later revealed restore the greatness of Nazi Germany). Surprisingly, a very similar plot of Nazi villains trying to obtain an artifact that will allow them to go back in time and prevent the fall of Germany appeared in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).
Benedict Mazurek plays the grizzled adventurer hero. Back in the heyday of pulp adventure and the Serial, heroes would frequently be given dynamic, adventurous sounding names – Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Ace Drummond, Brick Bradford, Crash Corrigan, Red Ryder, Hop Harrigan and the like. Benedict Mazurek takes the name Danger from a crate of explosives (although we never find out why he hides behind a pseudonym). Meanwhile, Paul Haapaniemi calls himself Jungle Jim, which was the name of an actual adventure hero that originated in a syndicated comic-strip and was then played by Johnny Weissmuller in sixteen B movies beginning with Jungle Jim (1948) in the late 1940s/early 1950s followed by a tv series.
There is even a copycat John Williams score – which opens the film with rousing mock symphonic sweep only for the big anti-climax to be that the opening scene is not any race or escape from peril but simply Benedict Mazurek on a cliffside having parachuted in and become impaled on a tree branch. (Mazurek improbably goes through the entire film with an untreated chest wound and collapsed lung due to having been impaled on a branch. Even aside from the fact he would be seriously bleeding out, this would also mean that he would have major difficulties breathing and/or probably have blood in his lung, which would seriously impair all the running around and action he engages in throughout).
The film is made on a definite low-budget. Hence there is little in the way of adventuring and action – certainly, nothing that ever approaches the enthralling scenes we get in the film’s source of inspiration, the Indiana Jones films. We do get a tomb of sorts that they raid in the latter sections of the film. The supposed African location go no further than shooting at L.A.’s Laurel Canyon and Vasquez Rocks, the latter a regular location for numerous films and tv series, including several classic episodes of Star Trek (1966-9).
The latter sections is where the film gets to be its most interesting and develops a whole other dimension as a Time Travel film (of sorts – although it is more a work about trying to procure a time machine than any actual time travelling). What becomes quite interesting is the motives each of the characters are revealed to have about the time machine – Benedict Mazurek wants to use it to go back and save his daughter from dying in a fire; brother and sister Angela Smeraldi and Paul Haapaniemi had a father who worked for the government on understanding the machine that came from the future; while Alexandra Keller is using it ostensibly to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union (which would not occur for five years after the film’s timeframe) but is really wanting to go back and prevent the Third Reich from falling. The film arrives at an interesting slingshot ending, which may well be a timeloop – a sequel would certainly venture into some interesting territory.
Trailer here