Robert J. Maxwell A mediocre film involving a trio of villains (including Miguel Ferrer and Linda Purl) chasing the usual assemblage of disaster victims (including Ed Begley, Jr.) through the damp, chilly, dramatic forests of the Northwest coast.Weaknesses: The acting. Lessons needed all around. Even performers who have been good elsewhere seem to be hobbled by the script and the direction. Miguel Ferrer, after having been full of determination and anger, at one point must cross a chasm on a tiny tram and he hangs back. "What's the MATTER?", Purl demands. "I'm scared to death of heights," Ferrer confesses, and his expression remains exactly as it was during his previous incarnation as a bull-headed, reckless murderer. Or -- let me put it this way. Have you ever visited the Hall of Presidents at Disneyland? The display where the robotic figures go through their animatronic antics, imitating live humans? Ed Begley, Jr., does better -- praise be to him. He has TWO expressions. Cowardice and contempt. His is the role of the corrupt banker absconding with the funds. Compare Berton Churchill in "Stagecoach" or Frederick March in "Hombre." Linda Purl has some real potential but it's stifled here. With a little effort, you feel you might roll her up into a little ball of sodium propionate. Saucy little figure, though.The script is rudimentary. The three heavies track down a bus and shoot it off the road. The crash into the woods is actually pretty well done. Applause for whoever directed that scene. Then follows a pursuit, the three heavies after the passengers, which include a young boy whose hair never is messed up and a beautiful blind woman who shares a sleeping bag naked with the heroic but dumb leader of the survivors. (Don't ask. Well, okay. She fell into a freezing cold stream and he had to jump in after her and they had to get nude together to keep warm. By the way, he falls asleep -- easily, if you ask me.) There is one of those rickety wooden bridges that the diverse innocents must cross. Will the blind chick have trouble with all those missing planks? Will a body fall into the chasm below? A hiker who is a real nonentity shows up near the start of the pursuit and you know immediately he's dead meat.Strengths. Well, the title is pretty good, although completely misleading. "Deception Ridge" is a fine and ominous name but it doesn't figure in the story, which is rather more than an "incident." Some of the crises and their resolutions are implausible but none are spectacularly, supernaturally IMPOSSIBLE. It's not as bad as SOME such thrillers. (Cf., "Cliffhanger.") Probably because many special effects were too expensive, but, for whatever reason, it's kind of interesting to see these low-mimetic types hoof it through wood and stream. Nice streams too. Foaming little rapids and glacier blue depths. Some of those pristine rivers are choked with salmon during the season when they spawn. I spent hours letting my spinner twirl among them and never caught any. Come to think of it, there was this little girl not far down the bridge with a home-made hand line pulling up one salmon after another. A humiliating experience if there ever was one. I wanted to use her as bait. But, never mind all that. These are pretty scenic locations. They include a monstrous chute that looks like the Reichenback Falls if the Reichenbach Falls were made with cement. Imagine a salmon trying to get up that thing? No degree of piscine horniness would lead to success.If you want to while away two hours and can overlook the acting and the stilted parts of the script, this ought to get the job done.

Pepper Anne Despite initially appearing to be a sluggish, cheap thriller with predictable ploys, "Incident at Deception Ridge" turned out to be a pretty good action/thriller movie with a few unseen twists here and there. The story involves a couple of people on a bus to Seattle. Our main character is Jack Bolder (Michael O'Keefe), a guy who is on his first day out of the slammer. Though a convict, we discover that Bolder is actually a good-natured fellow who was wrongly accused of embezzlement. Not only that, he went to jail to protect his sister, who was also the victim of her ex-husband's embezzlement scheme that bought Bolder a few years behind bars. So, just out, Bolder plans to start fresh. So, Jack hops a bus to Seattle with his sister. Meanwhile, Jack Davis (Ed Begley, Jr.), who appears to be a mild-mannered man frantically trying to muster the ransom for his wife, kidnapped by two gun-toting brothers, actually turns out to be a double-crosser. He hops the same bus to Seattle without getting the money to the kidnappers. And boy, that made the two kidnappers and Jack's wife sore. And thanks to his wife, the guys have an idea of where Jack is headed, so they follow that bus.Needless to say, there is some confusions as to which Jack the crazy gun-toting trio (now including Jack Davis's wife) is after. They pull up along the road, shoot up the bus, and a handful of people, including both Jacks, flee from the gunfire. And that's where the fun begins--the game of cat and mouse through a beautiful forrest (Canadian?), hoping to get out of there alive. Meanwhile, there's tension among the kidnappers and Jack's wife. She's like the Yoko of the group, and the more violent of the kidnappers goes off on his own to hunt down the group and get their money while the other one (Miguel Ferrer) and Jack's wife play mind games with each other as they become suspicious of each other's loyalties to the other. One thing they'll soon realize is, they didn't pick the ideal couple. Jack Bolder isn't the sole hero of the group in that Clint Eastwood kind of way, where he comes up with all the good ideas and protects the "weaker" ones of the group. Aside from the idiot, Jack Davis, who is responsible for all the trouble these surviving bus passengers find them in, the group all has something to offer. For example, they travel with a blind woman, who has a good sense of direction and acute sense of hearing, so like the raised nose of a guard dog, she can often indicate to the group when a presence is near them, so at least they can have a head start. Aside from the more vicious kidnapper brother who would just assume kill anyone in his way, Ray Hayes (Ferrer) and Jack Davis's wife don't appear that threatening. Sure they run around with guns flying, but all they want is Jack's money, but they never quite seem to be fixated on doing too much harm to the group, at least no more than necessary to get what they're after. And I suppose that's in part, too, because of the distraction that Hayes and Jack Davis's wife endure when they become suspicious of each other's loyalties. Hayes is never sure is Jack's wife is really on his side, and vice versa. But, she's got a few tricks up her sleave. This made-for-tv movie offers some good action sequences, story, and performances with a relatively unknown cast (except for Ferrer and Begley) in this Run or Die kind of feature, and definitely worth a viewing.

jobeblanc The plot couldn't be simpler but the acting is reasonable to good, and the nature scenery (British Columbia come Oregon) is beautiful. This is an entertaining action movie with some character development and a bit of romance (good and bad) that didn't take a lot of effort to follow. None the less the film keeps your attention because the scenes change so rapidly.There is no gratuitous foul language, but a bit of silly shooting.It is not overly clear or credible why the larger group of burdened pursued, keep managing to outrun their fleeter-footed pursuers. And it is never clear why the pursued didn't try to deceive their advantaged pursuers.5.7 / 10 on my scale

lionel.willoquet Two brother criminals try to ransom the banker Ed Begley Jr. whose wife they have kidnapped. But the meeting is not kept: at the last moment, Begley Jr. conceives a stratagem and flee with the money. As a result, his wife, outraged, decides to help her kidnappers... The intrigue is somewhat lacking, but overall the film is effective, not devoid of a few humorous touches in a superb natural setting.