After earning international recognition with his fun drama Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, director Jalmari Helander has returned. Rather than jumping head-first into the world of Hollywood, his latest film, Big Games, features a handful of American actors, but still takes place in the Finnish countryside, with a mix of languages being used.
Starring Samuel L. Jackson (as the President of the United States), Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Jim Broadbent, and Mehmet Kurtulus, it follows Air Force One going down in a crash and POTUS must now be protected by a teenager who encounters him in the woods when a group of terrorists try to hunt him down. Premiering at TIFF last fall, it looks like enough fun with Helander’s Spielberg-esque sensibilities once again at play. Check out the first trailer, clip, and poster below.
Update: Watch a new U.S. trailer below.
In the rugged Finnish countryside, timid thirteen-year-old Oskari (Onni Tommila) embarks on a traditional quest to prove himself by spending twenty-four hours alone in the wild, armed with only a bow and arrow. As Oskari wanders the vast forest, the night is ripped apart by a deafening crash. Following a trail of broken trees and burning debris, Oskari discovers the escape pod from Air Force One, containing the battered and bruised President of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson).
With a team of terrorists hot on the president’s trail, the life of the most powerful man in the world lies in the hands of a teenage woodsman — and this unlikely duo is soon plunged into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, with the clock ticking down towards disaster.
Big Game will be released on June 26th.