Thanks to his well-documented and heavily-publicized behavior, Armie Hammer’s mainstream career is pretty much dead in the water at this stage, with his family history even becoming the subject of a true crime docuseries. In a delicious twist of irony, Netflix users have been flocking to 2016 thriller Mine in their numbers, with the entire plot revolving around the actor trying not to get himself blown up.
As per FlixPatrol, the feature-length debut of writer/directors Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro has landed a spot on the platform’s most-watched list, in spite f being panned when it first released. Despite boasting an intriguing central conceit, a 17 Rotten Tomatoes score and 45 percent user rating signals that the execution was severely lacking.
Hammer headlines as Marine sniper Mike Stevens, who ends up trapped in the desert during a covert mission after stepping on a landmine. Refusing to lift his foot to prolong what increasingly looks like the inevitable, the determined soldier instead fights off the enemy single-handedly while waiting to be rescued, battling adversaries of a physical, mental, and psychological nature.
The potential was definitely there for a gripping and intense tale that unfolds largely from a single confined location, but the general apathy to greet Mine paints the picture of a film that based itself on a potentially one-of-a-kind concept, but then failed to make it the focal point of the narrative.
In the end, it became a forgotten footnote that barely made any impact at all, but has finally found an audience since landing on Netflix, albeit at a time when the leading man is persona non grata in Hollywood circles.