A Million - reviewed

A Million follows 8 contestants in a Survivor-inspired trek through the harsh and unforgiving Australian outback as they are literally eliminated as the game progresses; driven by the maniacal director in charge.

The film begins with a man, crouched in a desolate place with a gun to his head. Flash forward to sometime in the future and a woman is rushed to a hospital in Korea, two generic detectives in pursuit of her. As they question her to understand the missing pieces, the story flashbacks to the beginning of the game. The pacing is awry but it takes enough time to catch glimpses of the contestants, those that applied and those that did not as they receive the envelope or the phone call with the news that they will be part of the next game, while not bothering to explain this immensely popular reality show and the mythos behind it.

"This is total hicks-ville" declares one of the contestants as they touch down in Australia. The locals immediately curse them and I had to chuckle because as an Australian I believe that would be the reaction country folk would give over-dressed Koreans. It is a bizarre premise; to mix the localisms of Australia with the plastic box office of Korea and it works to an extent but even in the arid and unclean conditions somehow everything is neat and everyone still has excellent hair.

The contestants are mostly introverts and stereotypes; the tough protagonist, slut, geek, nerd, rich guy, all-rounder, independent and stubborn types are all reflected and are entertaining to watch fall apart as they realize the gravity of their situation and the human element kicks in as they fight, flee, work together and even happily betray one another. The premise could not be more preposterous as the crazy rich director has set up video camerasstreaming to the internet 24/7 ready for him to edit. The problem with this is that they are always captured on film so therefore this must easily be the most complex and exhaustive program imaginable as it is clearly not feasible to cover the immense Australian outback with video coverage.

After they realize the game is for real they hatch an escape plan but end up wandering the harsh desert until they collapse conveniently together from exhaustion, only to be helped up from the director then coerced to move on. The setting is definitely the most original and interesting premise in the film. The landscapes are often beautiful and work conveniently for the plot as rivers; deserts and forest are all used as part of the challenges but the challenges themselves are quite uneventful and it is surprising that this program on the internet is popular at all. Perhaps this is the point and is a satire of sorts as the director comments how pathetic the internet commentators are as one of them states he is "masturbating to one of the eliminated contestants' corpse". Regardless the challenge scenes would have been better shot and more innovatively utilized if they appeared in the reality TV show format as intended.

The film starts to fumble once the premise unfolds as the characters wander from one death to the next. In comparison to similar films that have come before it, A Million is quite tame. It plays with the idea of anything for the right price and does not explain why the director is so extremely rich; his reluctant cameraman is bribed for his non-objective attitude and the intentions of the director become the focal point as it is slowly revealed that this was not random and at this point this is the only reason to continue watching this by-the-numbers thriller.

There is a method to the director's madness, and he promises the one survivor the one million dollars. He is a man of his word but by this point it is too lateand a clichédscenario unfoldsto explain the why, and yet again there is a flashback that neatly ties the story up.

A Million is entertaining enough; the location is stunning and the mystery behind the directors reasoning is enough to make this worth the watch till the conclusion, but there is not much else to be said beyond this.