'The Edge': Trouble Bruin

David Mamet Scripts A Grizzly Action Film

"The Edge," a lost-in-the-wilderness trek starring Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin and Bart the Bear, puts you in touch with your inner Rambo. Although smarter than the average killer-bear movie and blabbier as written by David Mamet, the picture is still muscular enough to suit the manly man's movie lover.

Set against a majestic, most un-Mametish backdrop of rugged mountain ranges and vast Alaskan skies, the perilous, if rather predictable adventure explores the kinship that develops between former rivals when obliged to fight off a common threat: a 1,500-pound brown bear planning on a human picnic.

While most outdoorsmen must actively seek out wildlife (thus the verb "hunt"), Charles (Hopkins), Bob (Baldwin) and Bob's assistant (Harold Perrineau) have no sooner crawled from the wreckage of their plane than the bear appears and begins its Jawsian pursuit. With all their supplies except a handful of flares at the bottom of an icy lake, they must attempt to survive without food, warm clothing or even a compass.

Charles, an elderly billionaire bookworm, immediately proves more useful than either Bob, a cocky fashion photographer, or his young assistant, who's obviously little more than an ursine Twinkie. Still, thanks to Charles's vast and eclectic store of knowledge, the trio manages to survive the bear's initial attack, but is reduced to a duo when the men inadvertently double back on themselves and return to the animal's territory.

As one of the local geezers warned before they departed, once a bear has tasted Homo sapiens it won't go back to roots and berries. So it begins to stalk the two men, who are initially too caught up in their personal antagonism to realize the danger. Charles is convinced that Bob wants to kill him for his money and his trophy wife (Elle Macpherson), a supermodel whose cozy relationship with the photographer exacerbates her husband's insecurity to the point of paranoia. Or is it?

The man-hungry bear's pursuit is definitely much more interesting than the conflict between the two men, though Charles's inner journey from egghead to postmodern Daniel Boone is nicely underplayed by Hopkins. Baldwin, so dynamic in Mamet's adaptation of his play "Glengarry Glen Ross," is affable enough, but he's unable to expand upon this callow role -- he's more of a sidekick than Hopkins's dramatic equal.

The story suffers from the lopsidedness of the two starring roles, but is ultimately diminished by a sudden, silly and unmotivated twist, which allows Mamet to end with a heavy-handed metaphor. Though crisply directed by Lee Tamahori ("Once Were Warriors"), this is no "Call of the Wild." But it provides the bear essentials.

The Edge is rated R for profanity and violence.