By Cat Woods -
Eric Bana combines elements of characters he’s portrayed in the past and the rugged terrains they've lived in, worked in, and become lost in, to depict troubled National Parks Service special agent Kyle Turner. While the scenery is stunningly cinematic, and Bana does his best as a gruff loner, the script and plots have deeper crevices than Yosemite National Park.
Turner (Bana) is launched into a murder investigation in California’s Yosemite National Park, which is stunning in its deep ravines, soaring rockfaces, oceans of verdant forest, and populace of wolves, deer, bears, and runaway humans. In the process of answering what happened to a murdered young woman, how she came to be in the park, and why she was someone’s victim, Turner’s and his colleagues’ secrets unspool.
It’s been 25 years since Melbourne-born Eric Bana starred as criminal-cum-celebrity Mark “Chopper” Read, scoring a handful of Australian and international film awards. His trajectory since has encompassed animated voices, comic book icons, Roman warriors, romantic dramas, and mystery dramas.
It is no longer a surprise to see Bana show up on the big screen, small screen, podcasts or short films across any and all genres, nor for him to give a gobsmackingly good performance. What may surprise audiences, however, is how easily he convinces us that he’s true-blue Aussie in films like The Dry, before fully embodying an American Navy SEAL in Lone Survivor.
Untamed protagonist, Kyle Turner is a unification of the well-trained SEAL, the investigator in an unruly outback environment, and a charming but psychologically tormented man. As Turner, Bana is brooding, gruff, and solitary. His ex-wife has remarried a reliably dull dentist, though she continues to indulge Turner’s 2am phone calls, and his colleagues avoid too much engagement out of fear of awkward conversations. This avoidance of Turner by management and rangers alike stems from the abduction and murder of Turner’s young son in Yosemite years before. The killer remains unidentified, and Turner attempts to tamper his grief in bourbon and lengthy, solo horse-rides through the parklands.
The first, most breathtaking aspect of Untamed is the scenery. It was filmed in Vancouver and surrounds throughout 2024, including Mount Seymour, Murdo Frazier Park, Maple Ridge, and Chip Kerr Park. The opening scenes involve aerial views of a soaring, miles-high rockface sweeping from forest into clouds. Then, we zoom in on a couple of men in professional harnesses scaling the steep, vertical rocks – each footstep carefully calculated and prone to sending a tumble of smaller rocks flying into the ether. Within minutes, a body comes flying from overhead, nearly taking the men down too, before the ropes pull tight and a catastrophic fall is just averted. The body that has fallen from above has been caught in a harness, a young woman with bloodied legs, hands and feet. At this point, Turner is called in, along with a new recruit from LA, Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), under the authority of their chief Paul Souter (Sam Neill, who bravely wrangles with playing an underwritten, underutilised character).
The partnership, or semblance of one, between Turner and Vasquez doesn’t gel. While there’s no shortage of series about mismatched duos plagued by their personal demons, this series brought to mind the first season of “True Detective” (2014). Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughy’s wily, weird homicide detectives were magnetic on screen in an unforced, organic alchemy of foibles and determination to solve the case. That sense of utter commitment to justice is missing in action in Untamed, despite colleagues implying that Turner is unusually perseverant in investigating the missing girl’s circumstances. Viewers might well think this is because it’s his sole job, but there’s an implication by fellow characters that Turner is going above and beyond. To further push the comparison with True Detective, and likewise with the excellent series Dark Winds (set within the police force on Navajo Country) , there’s a lack of otherworldly eeriness in Untamed that made both of the former shows such a clever combination of thriller and mystery.
Turner comes across as not so much a secretive, complex man but a broody, bad-tempered narcissist with little dimension. This is only exacerbated by the series’ women problem. Vasquez, Turner’s ex-wife Jill (the wonderful Rosemarie DeWitt), the victim (Ezra Franky as Lucy Cook) and her mother, the barely-sketched hotel employee (Alexandra Castillo as Lana) Turner is having sex with whenever he’s bored and lonely are all either victims, damsels in distress, or utterly sexually beguiled by Turner’s misanthropic charm. In not partnering Turner with a stronger personality, a woman prepared to advocate for herself and the victim, the scriptwriters missed an opportunity to inject some real intelligence, complexity and pizzazz into the storyline.
Rather, the dialogue is fattened with melodrama and just when you think a point has been made visually or audibly, someone on screen points it out repeatedly. With scenery so glaringly majestic, the fine balance between this cinematic, visual boldness and a much-needed depth and narrative evolution in the characters and script is scrambled. Perhaps that was to be predicted considering the main screenwriter and executive producer, Mark L. Smith’s CV is a long list of fantasy thrillers, post-apocalyptic sci fi, and boys’ own adventure tales in which lone male heroes conquer their violent terrain and romance women who desperately crave a male saviour in their insufferable lives (Twisters, The Revenant, American Primeval).
There are yawning crevices in this plot that any intelligent nuance is lost in, but it still stands up as a tense, visually captivating thriller with excellent performances from established actors, however two-dimensional their characters. A tauter script might have seen this series reach the peaks of True Detective and Dark Winds as a prestige series. Nevertheless, Bana, Yosemite National Park, and a twisting, curious procedural plot are reason enough to tune in.
Untamed debuts on Netflix July 17.
