What can be more romantic than jumping over the pit of hell to meet the right one?
As the old song goes:
he was a mercenary manhunter with PTSD-induced nightmares and nothing to live for
she was a trained sniper with a world distance record for the perfect shot
can I make it any more obvious?
Speed's Sandra Bullock warned us that relationships born from dangerous situations don't have the best odds, but life in this century has become a 24/7 dangerous situation, so we may as well fall in love and hope for the best. If you've been assigned by a super-secret agency to stand guard by the edge of a cursed pit full of unknown horrors, all on your own, for an entire year, and the only human being available to talk to is the other expert sharpshooter stationed in the tower at the other edge of the pit, what are you going to do? Have romantic dinner by candlelight in the evening and fire bazookas at the hungry hordes from the abyss in the morning, that's what you do.
It's nothing terribly innovative to juxtapose the blossoming of love and the ever-present specter of death, but it hits differently after a worldwide pandemic. Whether intentionally or not, The Gorge captures the feeling of isolation during quarantine, the encroaching boredom of having the same books and the same walls to look at day after day after tedious day, and the hunger for human connection that can't be fulfilled because what awaits outside is death. In those months of mandated seclusion, it truly felt like there was an all-devouring gap between us and our neighbors, and crossing that forbidden distance was always followed by a period of heightened dread: Did I get infected? In how many days will I know? Have I become a danger to others? It's a miracle to find the love of your life in such circumstances.
But there's another way of reading the themes of The Gorge, if you'll allow me a small spoiler. As our two lethal lovebirds investigate what created that rotten hellscape, they run into some wartime secrets that their respective governments have been remiss about handling. The winning parties of World War 2 have spent decades trying to keep the titular gorge from spreading its filth to the rest of the planet. It won't do to just contain this relic from Nazi times; it needs to be eliminated. As long as that threat remains, there's a sense in which World War 2 is still being fought today.
Which seems fitting for our times, when somehow, after all these years, we still have to deal with leftover Nazi garbage sprouting around us like mutant weeds. In The Gorge, the whole problem began because the winning parties (Americans, Brits and Russians) tried adopting the enemy's methods. Well, look at us now. The curse has touched us, and we were the ones who invited it in.
As combat thrillers go, some of the tension in The Gorge is lost by the audience's knowledge that both leads are professional assassins who can survive a fight with tree-themed zombies with only a few scrapes to show for it. But as a welcome tradeoff, there's an element of competence porn in the way these two quickly synergize their skills into an efficient killing team. There's no "come with me if you want to live," no unforced errors caused by panic, no one assigned to the role of damsel in distress. When they save each other's lives, it's presented as partners in battle doing their business, not as the Designated Awesome coming to the rescue of the Designated Clumsy. I was surprised by how much more I could enjoy a scene of continuous machine gunfire versus the doubleplusundead when I didn't have to worry about anyone making a rookie mistake.
While watching, I needed to remind myself that there's a level at which this type of overanalysis can kill a story, and it's evident that this movie has been a victim of that. Of course world governments would be more deeply involved in keeping the gate to hell in check. Of course such a location would be patrolled with more than just two guards. Such criticism misses the point of the story. Despite the intense barrage of popcorny action (and there's more than enough of that, with lots of chases and headshots and explosions, and a particularly nail-biting scene with a slowly ascending jeep), I find it moving that The Gorge is essentially about the life-saving choice that our historical moment needs: finding the courage to reach across the open maw of chaos to hold the hand of a loved one.
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
