Driftless (2020) Poster

(2020)

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4/10
Righteous effort but a horribly poor script
stevepat991 February 2021
Warning: Spoilers
The star of this effort is Park Ranger Nova, a young native American woman who has just earned her park police certification. This means Nova is the 'law' in the park, armed with a gun and the power and duty to enforce the law.

A skin head drives up to the park entrance both, calls Nova Pocahontas and despite the racist insult Nova lets him drive into the park without paying the $10 park fee. Way to go Nova!

When a yahoo starts shooting his illegal ( in the park) gun into the air Nova violates protocol and by failing to draw her gun. Her partner chastises her and has to explain that firing his gun is not only illegal but is a very real danger to other visitors. How does the script allow Nova to be ignorant of all this? And then has both of them failing to confiscates his gun..

The superintendent, Nova's boss, knows the river has been seriously poisoned by a fracking company with dead fish and deer. Yet he takes not action to post danger, do not swim or drink signs. Then, knowing the river water is poisoned he shuts off the water in the park due to a budget shutdown. This causes a young mother to drink the river water which poison water kills her and causes her baby to drown. After all this happens a young ranger says 'I'll post danger signs. What a wacky script.

A deranged criminal, armed with a gun, steals a ranger hat and badge. He impersonates a ranger, kidnaps a young woman visitor, takes her to a remote cabin and ties her up. Nova finds the woman tied up in a cabin and confronts the kidnapper with her gun drawn. At which point the script has the kidnapper saying: You won't shoot me and Nova letting the armed kidnapper simply walk away so he can kidnap again or do even worse. Then, the kidnapper she let go free tries to gun down her partner. At that point Nova shoots him in the leg and is hailed as a hero for saving her partner ...the crazed kidnapper/gunman she failed to arrest. Nova should have been fired on the spot for dereliction of duty. I mean, worst law enforcement ranger ever.

Finally, we see almost no one enjoying the park peacefully as the script presents a crazed gunman./kidnapper, poisoned river that kills a young other, a racist taunting a woman visitor and a drug addict who abused his girlfriend and nearly dies of an overdose,. Did I mention Nova found visitors trying to desecrate and steal from an Indian park site?

As said, worst script ever.
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1/10
Really bad
cdnkelly-5297719 May 2021
Unwatchable. I spent years camping with NPS and also as a volunteer with NPS. Badly made film. I believe this was a real School project from some college. But ended up as a 8th grade production.
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1/10
Incredibly bad
grubishdavelinda5 November 2023
The driftless area is so beautiful, but this movie is literally the worst thing I've ever seen. Period. Such horrible stereotypes and pathetic scripting. I cannot believe it got produced. Soooooooo BBBBbBbAAAAAD!

Go visit the area. You will love it. You will love the people. Skip this awful, garbage movie. I cannot say enough how bad this is.

It ended up being simply laughable and so bad my husband and I had to see it through to the end. The least they could have done was show more of the area. That would have at least been interesting.

The Mississippi River coupled with the insanely lovely rolling hills make it.

The House on the Rock was also weirdly worth the time and money.
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1/10
Garbage propaganda
gressman075 July 2021
If you've come here for a Fourth of July movie, you made a mistake. If you came for cringe political/environmental propaganda that makes CNN look like a top-tier production in comparison, you might be in the right place.

Do yourself a favor and watch The Bay instead, which actually implements a movie around its message instead of vice versa. Not that this should be classified as a movie so much as non-actors who cannot act simply reading aloud their cringe scripted lines. You will likely see more talent in your local High School plays than this monotonous propaganda trash.
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1/10
Unprofessional and Ridiculousness Script/Production
cprc-8932924 March 2024
The actors do a good job, and the setting is visually pleasing, but those are the only positives.

I worked in the job and agency this film pretends to portray and they got just about everything wrong, including the silly size of the name tags! The producer either did little to no research, or ignored it. This is a HIGHLY unrealistic portrait of this type of work. Just to name a few problems... The uniform, the duty gear, the lack of body armor, the conversations, the lifestyle, the viewpoints, the cultural conflicts, the downtime, the politics, the diversity in staff, the charming and G rated politically correct language, and more. Real Law Enforcement Officers have to have a dark sense of humor to keep their mental health intact, and frequently cope by making light of the difficult situations they are forced to come front all day. Where is that in this fantasy film?

This script is clearly the product of someone who guessed what doing this job must be like, then made a silly movie to force a perception of reality on unsuspecting viewers.

People who work in that field are MUCH less diverse than the workforce portrayed. The problems they encounter are basically all the same problems encountered in any other police job (domestic violence, poverty, drug use, DUI, theft, and tons of basic traffic violations, to name a few). Basic field level officers do not have interactions or influence over topics encountered in this movie. That is silly and make believe. In reality, these officers would spend almost the entire shift doing things like writing tickets for littering and entering closed areas, and the rest of the time doing associated paperwork and mandatory trainings.

All you need to know to avoid this movie is what people who wrote positive reviews have said (pay attention to their grammer and writing quality). If that sounds like a good time, good luck.
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10/10
Film with a Purpose
rnahigian24 November 2020
Driftless takes a fresh look at America, the key issues we face, and the people that form this unique nation, through the lens of a state park in the upper-Midwest, and it does so in a very deft and clever manner. I, personally, do not like giving up on people, no matter how temporarily "out of order" they may be, and it was refreshing to experience a main character in a film who feels the same tug on their heart (to not close the door on people). Really, the entire cast of this film played their respective roles exceptionally well, and overall, I felt Driftless displayed, in a very raw and real sense, what it means to be an American today, profoundly capturing the key issues our country continues to grapple with. Much gratitude to all who made this film, a film I know will help spread a message of love and respect for our lands, and each other, so that we all may do our own part to keep this country/world clean and healthy, natural and friendly, and thus wild and "wealthy" (but in a natural sense). #fram
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8/10
Important Issues Highlighted
twelve-house-books13 May 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A number of the relevant issues facing Americans of all ethnicities are highlighted in this film including insane survivalists, the plight of the American Indians and some of the intricacies involving their identities, Skinheads and their off-kilter "white" agenda not too dissimilar to that of the survivalists, the average "white" American's privileged viewpoint regarding other ethnicities including Indians, multinational companies destroying flora and natural resources as well as living beings (animals and people) by fracking, and the general ignorance mixed with irrational arrogance of the average "white" American. One of the park rangers asks the question to another one, and I paraphrase, "Is it just me or have people become meaner and more ignorant lately," a question which echoes my own understanding of the last 20 years. In the 80s and 90s Americans were at relative peace with one another. What has happened to change that? We're on a downward spiral to full destruction if we don't turn back to our Creator, beg forgiveness, beg transformation, and begin to follow Jesus--or at least, as the older Americans once did, pretend to follow Jesus. It seems that pretense was far better than outright aggression like we all experience today. Organized religion sure has done a great job of sharing the good news of peace and goodwill and eternal life.
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10/10
Timely and Relevant
philbinj10 June 2021
I appreciated the fact that it didn't get graphic in the movie -- no dead bodies, flowing blood, slow motion killing. The storyline is a good tale, with so many vignettes going on, from Magas to supremacists to stoners to naive hikers to survivalists and then the backdrop of the heartless bureaucrat ignoring the river pollution. Well-structured. The striking drone shots were nice interludes. The best was the campfire scene--that was sort of the climax of the movie, actually, where Nova came to a realization. And a nice plot twist at the end! Good acting; well-edited.
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10/10
See this
dslav-0152616 October 2022
Sneaky good film. I was bored last weekend so I decided to flip through Tubi on my TV and I stumbled across this movie. The brief movie description made it sound sort of interesting, and it is a little different than most other movies. I was pleasantly surprised, and I'm not overly into camping nor the outdoors. The plot is interesting and all I am going to say is the main female actor is absolutely hot. I mean like ridiculous hot. She carried the movie, along with the main male lead cop.

Don't listen to the negative reviews....this is a decent low budget movie that gives some interesting insight into national parks.

O, did i mention that the lewd actress is gorgeous?
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