Director: Richard Martin
Cast: Madchen Amick, Graham Greene, Adrian Pasdar, Robert Costanzo

I've certainly taken a lot of time on this website to bash the Canadian film industry, particularly the Canadian government bureaucrats who make one wrong-headed decision after the other. I've mentioned before how Telefilm Canada, the government film funding agency that funds almost every Canadian film that gets made, is mostly closed towards funding movies that Canadians would actually like to watch. But even in the rare instances when Telefilm funds something more commercial, the boneheadedness of Telefilm more often than not holds the movie back. Let me give you an example of this that I don't think I've mentioned before. When a writer/director (the director is almost always the writer as well in a Canadian film funded by Telefilm!) proposes a film project to Telefilm, the distribution rights must first be bought by a Canadian distributor before the movie starts filming, and Telefilm has made it so the rights can be bought very cheaply. The distributor then immediately flips the movie like a landlord flips apartments by selling the film's broadcast rights to Canadian pay TV and streaming channels (which are forced by law to buy the broadcast rights to Canadian films, no matter if these films are not what their audience wants) for an instant and guaranteed profit. Then when the movie has finished being made, the distributor 95% of the time decides to give the movie little to no marketing or theatrical release because hey, they already made a profit, so why take a risk? This is also understandable because the movies are almost always cheap, usually don't have recognizable actors, and usually have audience-unfriendly (and boring) stories and direction. So the distributors only give the movies an inexpensive small theatrical release, or a really cost-saving non-theatrical release. In fairness to Telefilm, they have publicly acknowledged that this movie-flipping is happening and they are unhappy about it, but instead of doing something like, you know, forcing movie producers to make a fair distribution deal with distributors before the movie starts filming if they want Telefilm funding - which would then push these movie producers to make movies the Canadian public would actually like to see  - Telefilm seems too reluctant to do that. Several years back, Telefilm instead started drafting a new policy to prevent distributors from buying distribution rights before movies were made, and that distributors would only once the movie was finished be able to get the rights, and only if they pledged to properly market and widely release the movies. However, this plan was scrapped when Telefilm realized that with these new guidelines, the distributors en mass would hiss, "Ahhh, screw this!", and not bother to pick up 95% or so of Canadian movies that would subsequently get made. Telefilm reluctantly concluded that Canadian movies getting little marketing and lousy distribution was better than Canadian movies getting no publicity and no distribution.... or for that matter, better than pushing Canadian movie producers to make more commerical movies.

Though as I said, Telefilm's penchant for focusing on funding pretentious artist-driven movies that only appeal to the writer/director and his/her two closest friends plays a large part in Canadian distributors' general lack of enthusiasm towards Canadian movies. So is it any wonder that there are some Canadians in the Canadian film industry that have so much disgust towards Telefilm that they try to make movies with as little involvement with Telefilm as possible, sometimes with no help from Telefilm at all? Yes, while such figures are rare, they do exist. For example, there are the people at the Astron-6 studio, who have made ultra low budget yet lively and entertaining movies such as Manborg. There's producer Pierre David, who in the over 200 (!) movies he's produced in his career such as The Paperboy and A Lover's Revenge has mostly avoided being associated with Telefilm. Another Canadian producer who likes to do it alone is Robert Vince. You've probably not heard of him before, even if you're Canadian, but he's produced a number of movies without Telefilm support such as Millennium (the one with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd) and White Tiger (with Gary Daniels), but his most famous films are the absolutely endless (but very profitable) Air Bud films and their even more endless spin-offs. I once read a book called Weird Sex And Snowshoes, by Canadian film critic Katherine Monk, which was all about Canadian films and had a long quote from him, and in that quote, he complained about how Canada was a country that basically made few movies that people actually wanted to see, and he also declared that, unlike many of his Canadian film producer brethern, he would never become, "a Telefilm wh*re". (Hint: That censored word was not "where".)

But since journalism requires investigation and fair reporting, I have to reveal that I uncovered that Vince at least twice in his career did indeed become a Telefilm "whare". The first time was a film he produced called Cafe Romeo, a movie that has become lost to time despite having Michael Ironside (Visiting Hours) in the cast (though reportedly Ironside had next to no screen time in the movie.) The second instance I found was with another effort he produced, the movie Wounded. Though you might think from the title of that second movie that it was all about personal angst and trauma, seeing that the movie was funded by Telefilm, the surprise is that it isn't quite that case. When I researched the movie, I found out from its plot description that it apparently not only contained suspense, but action as well! Amazing things to find in a Telefilm-funded film! Not only that, the setting of the movie was in the United States and the characters were American - two things that are usually big no-nos when Telefilm considers a Canadian movie project. Plus, believe it or not, the director of the movie did not do any of the screenwriting! Those aspects of the movie intrigued me, and since I have been meaning for some time to review a Robert Vince movie, I took the plunge and watched it. As I said just a couple of sentences ago, Wounded takes place in America, specifically the Pacific Northwest in forest country. There are two park rangers, Julie (Madchen Amick, Dream Lover) and her love interest Don (Richard Joseph Paul, Quick Change) patrolling the forest when they abruptly come across several grizzly bears that have been shot illegally by some unknown party. As it turns out, the poacher is one man named Hanaghan (Adrian Pasdar, Heroes), and when Julie and Don return to the forest with FBI agent Ashton (Jim Beaver, Defense Play) commanding two agents to go with Julie and Don to catch Hanaghan, Hanaghan makes short work of them. Don and the two FBI agents are killed, and Julie is severely wounded, but she manages to be rescued and hospitalized. Her physical wounds heal, but her mind has suffered trauma, so much so that eventually she is obsessed with one thing - revenge. At the hospital, she meets Nick (Graham Greene, Sabotage), a burned out cop who has his own great issues, but takes Julie under his wing to hopefully send her down the right paths. But Hanaghan, learning that Julie is still alive, keeps taunting her and attempts again to kill her, and eventually Julie feels she must kill or be killed.

When one considers watching a Canadian film, whether it's independently made or (especially) when it got assistance from Telefilm, there is of course one thing that needs to be answered before watching the movie. That being the question: Is the movie a real movie? In the case of Wounded, it seems that the government bureaucrats didn't win the war, because the end results are that of a real movie - overall, that is. I'll get to the parts of the movie where it seems Telefilm might have had their hands on the production a little too much shortly, so I can start by saying Wounded certainly looks like a real movie. It's clear some real money (plus another part of it from taxpayers) was spent on its production. The sets look solid and acceptably furnished, though a lot of the movie seems to have been shot on real locations in downtown Vancouver and the surrounding wilderness, saving money that way. But some of the savings no doubt went to the cinematography and camera work. Director Richard Martin (Slap Shot 3) chooses a lot of interesting angles for the camera, even getting stuff like overhead and helicopter shots. Also, he frequently has both indoor and outdoor scenes lit with natural light in a manner that makes for some striking visuals... though a few more times than I liked, the reason they stood out is that they were a little too dark for my taste, with results like characters' faces being near-black blobs. Still, even those times there is definite strong atmosphere in the movie, aided by the choice of music, as well as choice of no music. There's some low-key new age music that pops up here and there in the wilderness scenes, and when things do heat up for the characters, the music is more conventionally peppy, though never overbearing. Interestingly, a lot of the movie has no music playing in the background, instead making the entire focus on the characters and their particular predicaments (more on that shortly), but in this particular film, the technique works very well; the dramatic situations feel more down to earth and natural, and you'll relate to them, even if you've never been shot or had your loved one murdered.

But don't worry, Wounded never gets to be your typical 100% angst-filled Telefilm movie. There are some moments of action, and they are pretty effective, with director Martin putting a definite sense of energetic chaos into them while keeping them coherent and fairly easy for the audience to follow. However, the one action scene you'll be waiting for - the final battle between Julie and Hanaghan - is a real disappointment. It's not only a lot shorter than you think it will be, but we don't see Julie struggle all that much during it, which lessens its potential impact. Plus, when the final blow is struck, the movie abruptly ends in a manner that will have viewers say to themselves, "That's it?" No dealing with consequences, no savoring victory for the winning party - boo, hiss. But to be fair to the movie, Wounded wasn't made to be a typical action movie. After Julie's near death, most of what follows up to that final battle is actually devoted to Julie recovering at the hospital, Julie becoming suicidal, then Julie being mentored by Nick with healing mentally... as well as preparing to fight Hanaghan, which is kind of an odd combination. This very long stretch of the movie will, I think, have some viewers turning off the movie out of boredom. Personally, I didn't think it was too bad; for me, seeing a more realistic healing process in the movie was a nice change of pace, and some of the interactions between Julie and Nick had warmth and humanity to them. Though I will admit that eventually I was kind of telling the movie to just get on with it, despite Hanaghan making sporadic appearances in this long stretch to remind the audience he's still there and a threat.

Also, I did have some other issues with Wounded's script. There are a number of glaring plot holes, ranging from how the protagonists track down Hanaghan in the opening in less than a minute of the movie's running time after the FBI arrives, to how one-man operation Hanaghan was able to drag multiple bear carcasses over long distances to one location. The biggest issues I had with the script, however, were that a number of key characters are not explored in great depth, so much so that the actors in those particular roles aren't able to do much despite their acting talents. The best character in the movie is the burned-out cop Nick, played very well by Graham Greene. Nick, while burnt out, isn't a hopeless case; we see he still has humanity, as well as a determination to do his duties as a cop the best that he can under the circumstances. When he's paired up with Julie in a scene, the two characters talk in a very believable and engaging manner. However, when Julie is away from Nick, the Julie character feels kind of hollow. We learn nothing about her past, she says almost nothing about her dead lover Don, and she seems very subdued and frequently reluctant to get the ball rolling... until the final ten minutes, when all of a sudden, she puts on camouflage paint on her face and tries to be a female Rambo, which feels really out of place and character. Still, this character is somewhat better than others in the movie. Don, for one thing, gets nothing to make him stand out before he gets killed, and FBI agent Ashton mutters here and there until about the halfway point before he eventually disappears and is never seen or mentioned again. Wounded is a movie that's significantly hurt by its scripting of its story and characters, though I personally still found it off-beat enough to keep me watching until its end... though I am not sure if it will do the same for other viewers. What I do know, however, is that compared to just about all other movies Telefilm has ever funded, the movie comes off as being very watchable and entertaining.

(Posted January 28, 2025)