Big Game (Finland, 2014)

It was the opposite of Air Force One. The president's 747 is shot down in the mountains of Finland. He's freed from his escape pod by tween Laplander Onni Tommila who was in the woods alone with a bow and arrow to prove himself as a hunter for his thirteenth birthday. He's crushed to discover that his father has no faith in his ability to do this. "I am nothing," he says.  He decides that saving the president (Samuel L. Jackson) from terrorists bent on capturing him is just as good as killing a deer. And the president definitely needs help. He was no Harrison Ford.

The amazing thing to me is that it was made for $10 million. Not enough for a Woody Allen movie, but they get way, WAY more for their money in Europe, especially Finland, apparently. Why do Allen's movies cost so much?

There's a reference to E.T. The president with a blanket over him looking like the alien in the basket of Elliot's bicycle. At one point, Onni tells the president, "My forest, my rules," which was like a line from The King's Speech although it's a strange place for that reference if it was one. And they recreate one of the less plausible moments from Tommila's earlier film, Rare Exports which was also written and directed by his uncle, Jalmari Helander, with his father, Jorma Tommila, playing his father.

They did come up with a plausible reason for abducting or killing the president, something other movies fail to do. There is a vice president, after all. It's not going to change anything.