The premise isn't at all new - meek worker bee gets taken advantage of in the workplace, owner retires and his frat boy son takes over, meek worker bee promised promotion goes to frat boy son's frat brother. Disaster leaves frat boy new boss injured on a deserted island with meek worker bee.
Happily the meek worker bee is a big wilderness survival person. She sent in an audition tape for the TV show "Survivor" and the frat boy executives happen to find it and are watching it on the private plane (hence, disaster setup) they're all taking to a client. She's there to do the actual work they'll take credit for before she's unknowingly going to be transferred to another job location where she'd be pushed even further into the shadows.
There's no real surprises going forward. She blossoms in the physical survival aspect of the deserted island, frat boy boss has to deal with the fact that he's completely dependent on her and she's not going to put up with his nonsense in this situation.
There's quite a bit of deserted island stuff like making shelter, capturing rainwater, finding food, and other stuff. She's off doing that while frat boy boss is resting and healing under said shelter. He pushes her a little too far so she leaves him alone for a day with no food or water. When she returns she makes sure the point of who's in charge is very clear.
Frat boy boss is not pleased but also understands the current reality.
As he heals there's the divide where he doesn't want to be around her, tries to survive on his own, finds out he can't. She does take him around the island she's explored and tells him about an area that's off limits due to dangerous plants. She also shows him how to tell if berries are inedible/poisonous by rubbing them on her arm and showing the rash that develops. I don't think that's how that works and there's no reason for her to tell him that besides setting up something further along in the movie.
She sees a boat in her solo explorations and doesn't hail it. She decides not to try to be rescued. He wants to be rescued and makes a fuss about her not doing anything he thinks she should, like spelling out "HELP" with branches on the beach. She lets him do his thing.
Tension grows as he gets better. She seems perfectly happy to be where they are, he wants to go home. There's no sexual tension although she spies on him bathing in the ocean. I think that was more the gratuitous butt shot than necessary for the story. I dunno. Nice butt tho.
While they're playing house she acquires an actual knife. When questioned she said all kinds of things wash up on the beach and doesn't elaborate. Again, a factor for later. She doesn't let him use it when he's doing his tasks.
One thing he's not happy about is that he thinks they (meaning she) should be building a raft to leave the island. I'm pretty darn sure she was right in not going along with this one since there's no other land visible so they'd end up floating on wherever the ocean currents took them with whatever food and water they could carry.
While she's out and about a boat shows up with frat boy's fiancé and a stereotypical generic ethnic boat captain. She takes them up along the high trail that she almost fell off earlier and makes sure that they do. To make things quicker here the fiancé slips, the boat captain catches her, they're both yelling at her for help, she bonks the boat captain with a rock so they both fall. This doesn't happen all in one scene - the bonking part is the last bit that's shown as part of the climax later.
He turns nice on her, apologizes for his behavior, and makes her a nice dinner. Personally I'd be hearing loud alarm bells. They're drinking the fruit she's had fermenting. She gets drunk-ish. She also gets poisoned by the very berries she showed him as inedible. Now we know why it was pointed out. He used them as a garnish on the fish dish.
While she's mostly out she sees him dragging out a raft he made and putting to sea. It's not a very good raft by any definition. The director makes a point of showing that frat boy took the bamboo cup with her name carved on it, as another reason to make frat boy unpleasant. The raft breaks apart and there's some gratuitous ick when she's throwing up on him while also giving him CPR. This kind of matters since in the beginning when he met her at work she had some tuna from her sandwich on her face and they made a big deal about how it bothered him.
After she recovers things get rolling. He finds his fiance buried in the sand on the beach so he confronts her. They hunting each other in the jungle as he realizes she really doesn't plan on leaving or trying to get rescued. Again there's some gratuitous gore that seems to be a director's trait. She ends up stabbing him with the knife. There's more stumbling around in the jungle and he goes where she said not to go.
He finds a house. A very nice house. Somehow he's able to circumvent the security to get into the house. Gorging on food he checks the silverware drawer to find no knives and handles that match the one on the knife that "washed up on shore". She's in the house monitoring the security.
This is where we get the climax rolling. The first boat turned out to be maintenance staff for the house and she watched them code in. She's been enjoying the house on her jungle adventures. Now he's found it and things are falling apart for her. There's the obligatory house hide-and-seek that ends up in the den. He's on his knees, bleeding from the knife wound, and she's got a golf club (a driver, I believe) at the ready. He's saying that he'd love to stay there with her.
She starts to fall back into the "I'll believe what I'm told" mode that got her screwed over at work and sees that one of the animal statues is missing the large pointy horn. The camera angle changes to show him holding it behind his back. She takes the swing.
Cut to her on the golf course, being interviewed about her best-selling novel about the experience and her prominence as a motivational speaker. The movie ends with her driving off in her shiny car.
OK. Let's get to the things that bothered me the most.
The movie itself didn't bother me much. It was standard fare. It was what I expected. The director didn't do anything to make it better than the script so meh all around.
They really did a disservice to surviving in the environment. They were bathing in the ocean, which leaves them covered in salt. The water they found would have been full of parasites and other ick which means they would have been shitting themselves to death. Eating all the uncooked fish, same parasite thing. And walking around in their city shoes would have gotten them trench foot really fast. I know why none of that happened but it bugs me that these very basic things were skipped over. It was a "Gilligan's Island" situation where nothing really bad happens.
It didn't turn into a female power movie as much as it was a power exchange movie, like these tend to be. Because there wasn't anything of note the movie kind of played out without much to draw me in. Of course she got more attractive when she wasn't being meek and mild. It was nice that they didn't do the sexual tension thing and left it at a power thing.
Anyway. It was a way to pass the time.
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