Keith is a pilot who has seen his work dry up, adding money worries to his already crumbling marriage. With no hope of things changing, his wife CeeCee decides to take their son and leave Keith behind. On the very night she kicks him out though, his lottery numbers come up and the couple win $23million dollars. CeeCee isn't convinced that the money will make any difference in their relationship but agrees to fly to Denver to claim the prize. However their plane is sabotaged by Keith's employers and they crash in the middle of the woods; survival in the cold is their first concern but very quickly it is evident that the saboteurs are coming after them for that winning ticket.
Despite the film having interesting elements, nothing really comes of them and the end result is a film that doesn't really do anything that well. The narrative starts with unlikely jumps that don't convince and it pretty much continues from there when it becomes a chase in the wilderness movie. Sadly, "chase" is not the right word because it implies action and pace, things that the film has neither of. The action is very slow and didn't engage me at all; for the majority of the film the Reicker family are walking away while their pursers squabble and slowly follow them the plight of neither is tense and the brief moments of action only manage to feel cheap and obvious. The plot had the potential to draw drama from the relationship between Keith and CeeCee but this starts badly and is never used well once the fact that it ends just the way you expect it to just makes it worse.
The cast are not much better although there are no bad performances per se just average ones. Doherty is just giving the usual nondescript performance that she churns out in so many TV movies and didn't convince me as a broken wife, reinvigorated lover, action heroine or mother. Marshall is average and is far too bland to lead a movie like this, especially when the material is as weak as this. Van Dyke isn't really annoying which, for a child actor in this sort of thing, is about as close to praise as I can get. Swedberg is best known for Sienfeld and long may it stay that way; she grows increasing manic throughout the film and lacks any form of subtly. Tench is OK but maybe that is only because he is alongside her in most of his scenes.
Overall this is not a terrible movie but it is poor and so unremarkably bland that I doubt it will garner many new viewers (or screenings) a few years from now. The action lacks any sort of tension or pace and feels cheaply done; the cast are average at best and the script fails to develop the action or the character relationships. Pointless, plodding and pretty p*ss poor.
