R | 1h 37m | Thriller, Drama | 2025
Coming courtesy of Lionsgate, the new action thriller “Off the Grid” stars “Transformers” star Josh Duhamel as a guy who’s got a combination of Oppenheimer’s brains, MacGyver’s ingenuity, and Rambo’s survival skill set. Of course, he holds the fate of humanity in his hands. Greg Kinnear (“As Good as It Gets”), and Peter Stormare (“John Wick: Chapter 2”) are the baddies.
Guy
Guy (Duhamel), a brilliant and humanitarian scientist, spent a large portion of his life attempting to create an energy source that will provide inexpensive, clean energy to poverty-stricken countries around the world.He invents a powerful, revolutionary generator small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. That’s a lot of power. But since power corrupts, Guy’s employers become corrupted at the very thought of it. They insist that he weaponize his breakthrough discovery.
Guy is a moral individual and therefore decides to change his identity, disappear, and take all of his research with him. He goes off the grid in a Southeastern American swampy area.
He spends most of his time alone, working in a small quonset hut he built himself, heading into town occasionally for supplies, where he helps the locals by tutoring a young student (Michael Zapesotsky). Ecuadorian singer and actress María Elisa Camargo plays Josey, a local restaurant owner, and the love interest.
Here Come the Bad Guys
Guy’s semi-idyllic, quiet existence is interrupted when his former employers sniff out his location. The big boss (Stormare) and his underling (Kinnear) send a mercenary squad to locate Guy, headed up by the very slimy and slightly unhinged Marcus (Ricky Russert), looking like a modern-day version of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III.
Ultimately
There’s no clear reason as to why Guy is skilled at escape and evasion tactics, or why he chooses to head for the swamps. Did he have a special forces military background? We don’t know. But we can guess. Duhamel, a former college quarterback, is in decent shape, but a former green beret living off the grid would be in significantly better shape. We'd see PT sessions.We'd not be seeing a wilderness survival faux pas like hanging strings of jerky a mere 5 feet off the ground for easy snacking. Those are easy snacks for a whole host of woodland critters too. One fisher cat would deplete Guy’s entire food store in five minutes. It would have made more sense for Guy—as a tech genius with the ability to manipulate cameras and databases—to operate as a ghost in plain sight.
Also, the way his former company is dealing with him is a bit of a head-scratcher. A company with limitless resources and this much at stake would hunt him down from all angles, with a former tier-one military operators-turned-mercenaries squad. As it is, the company appears to have shelled out for a goon squad that’s barely average.
Ultimately, this version of “Off the Grid” would’ve worked better as a drama. The good man forced to do bad things, to save those he cares for (and the world) is an engaging narrative and an action movie trope for a reason. But by focusing on the unimpressive action instead of the more dramatic emotional stakes, the narrative impact is dulled. “Off the Grid” feels half-hearted and low budget. It’s a great idea with lackadaisical execution.
