Themes: Survival in the Wilderness, Criminal's Revenge
Main Cast: Devon Sawa, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Rupert Graves, Rufus Sewell, Heino Ferch
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
A group of extreme winter athletes find themselves risking their neck for more than just thrills in this action drama. Jeffrey (Rupert Graves) is a director who has been hired to make a television commercial for a cellular phone company. For the spot, Jeffrey has come up with an exciting visual motif - a group of extreme skiers and snowboarders outrunning an avalanche on a remote mountain range. To get the needed footage, Jeffrey and his crew head to Austria, where they set up to film on a mountain near the former Yugoslavia; joining them is Olympic downhill champion Chloe (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) and world-class snowboarders Ian (Rufus Sewell, Will (Devon Sawa), Silo (Joe Absolom), and Kittie (Jana Pallaske). While filming along an unchartered slope, Jeffrey's camera crew make an unexpected discovery - they find the secret compound of international terrorist Slobodan Pavlov (Klaus Lowitsch), and even capture the deadly man on videotape. Extremely unhappy that he's been found out, Pavlov turns his immediate attention to eliminating Jeffrey, his crew, and his skiers, and soon the snowboarders are forced to use their skills not just for kicks, but to save their friends - and possibly the world. Director Christian Duguay) is an old hand at filming in snow-covered mountains, having made the TV movie Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story in 1994. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
A sexy young cast, fast sports action, thrilling set pieces, a dynamic techno score -- Extreme Ops has everything but a brain. It's a Labrador retriever of a movie, trying so hard to please as to drool all over the floor. The movie overall is not unlike the reckless, lovable members of the commercial cast, who think nothing of skateboarding on top of moving trains and snowboarding through the sky onto nightclub dining tables. But like an overeager dog, there's a certain charm that wins out, and when the film is over you come away thinking it wasn't half bad. Director Christian Duguay rightfully gets things moving early and only slows down for the slightest of expository reasons. Brain food? Hardly, but the action and stunts are what count, and they're terrific. A sequel wouldn't be odious. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide
A commercial director (Sewell) and three extreme sports enthusiasts (Sawa, Wilson-Sampras, and Graves) takes a trip to a distant mountain retreat for seasonal practice and stunt filming. They stumble upon an intricate group of terrorists plotting an attack. The terrorists soon find out they had been watched by this group and rush swiftly to kill the witnesses. Now racing for their lives against helicopters and expert assassins, they must put their quick extreme sports skills to the test in order to escape the mountain.
Originally titled The Extremists by its Canadian director for its plot concerning both "extreme" sports and terrorists, the title was changed so as to avoid the obvious negative connotations in a terror-obsessed post-September 11th society. The film performed very poorly worldwide, especially in America where the American characters were seen as inauthentic caricatures.
