"Bone Dry" was recommended to me by a good friend and promoted as a modest but exciting little thriller with an original setting and decent performances. Perhaps I simply wasn't in a very good mood when I watched it, but all I saw was a dire, derivative and overlong cat-and-mouse thriller without any thrills. Lance Henriksen – mainly off-screen but immediately recognizable thanks to his distinct voice – threatens a seemingly innocent guy (Luke Goss) at gunpoint and forces him to talk a long walk in the Mojave Desert. Eddie's journey on foot through the hot sand is inhumanly cruel and full of ambushes and death traps, while his unseen assailant follows him around in a jeep and armed with a sniper rifle. Director Brett A. Hart's script tries very hard to make us believe that Eddie is just a poor traveler at the wrong place at the wrong time, whereas Jimmy – the voice on the walkie talkie – is a sadist and merciless villain without proper motivation for his acts. But it's more than obvious right from the beginning that Eddie isn't a randomly targeted victim and that he probably deserves every humiliating and agonizing thing that overcomes him. Their excursion in the Mojave Desert quickly becomes tedious and repetitive, and personally I felt the urge to fast-forward towards the predictable "surprise ending". There isn't much character study going on and the vile interactions between the cat and the mouse are dull and pointless. Lance Henriksen's voice gives away a terrifically menacing performance and there are notable cameo appearances by Dee Wallace-Stone and Tommy Lister, but otherwise I can't find any good arguments to recommend this mundane and forgettable flick.
